KooKooLand

by Gloria Norris

  He stumbled back like he was drunk as a skunk, which he was, and I held on for dear life.

  “Get in the house or you’ll be next,” he bellowed.

  My sneak attack gave Virginia an opening. She broke free and took off down the street, looking back once.

  “I’m sorry,” she moaned. I knew what she meant. Sorry to leave us. Sorry for what he might do to me now.

  Jimmy finally shook me off. I landed on my keister and quickly scrambled back up.

  Several neighbors were peering out their windows. The Greek girls across the street looked horrified. Their older brother, who was home from the service, stepped outside in his uniform.

  “What’s the trouble, Jimmy?” he called out.

  “Trouble? My goddamn daughters, that’s the goddamn trouble.”

  “If you don’t calm down, somebody’s gonna call the cops.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s gonna call the cops? You?’

  “I didn’t say me. But somebody—”

  “You call yourself a Greek? Greeks mind their own business. Greeks keep family business within the family. They don’t call any cops. You think you’re some tough guy in a uniform? Well, come over here, tough guy. I’ll fight you.”

  “I’m not going to fight you, Jimmy. I’d lose. We both know that.”

  “Goddamn right,” Jimmy said.

  The Greek boy came across the street and approached Jimmy like he was trying to tame a tiger. He talked to Jimmy in Greek. Jimmy eyed the guy suspiciously, then laughed a few times and started throwing the baloney. He asked the kid if he wanted to marry his oldest daughter and take her off his hands, but the kid said he wasn’t in the market for a wife and Jimmy told him that was smart, told him to make it with a lot of women all over the world like he had done in the merchant marine. He lit a cancer stick and invited the kid in for a nightcap, but the kid said no thanks. Jimmy said it was too bad he didn’t have a son like him who knew how to respect his elders, and told him to kill a few gooks for him. Then he turned to me and Shirley.

  “Get your asses inside,” he said. “You’re causing a goddamn scene.”

  We scurried inside, not knowing what would happen once we got in there.

  But Jimmy didn’t do anything. He just told Shirley that he was starving and to make him a couple of fried egg sandwiches. Then he went in to watch The Jackie Gleason Show.

  He said only one more thing that night about Virginia leaving.

  Good goddamn riddance.

  But Virginia didn’t go very far.

  She just moved in with her friend, Angela, who lived one street over in the projects. Angela was about Susan’s age and already had three brats who Virginia sometimes babysat. I babysat them myself once. They hurled a dump truck at my noggin and dumped the Oscar Mayer wieners I was supposed to feed them in a puddle of mud.

  Virginia said the brats weren’t so bad once you got to know them, and insisted Angela was a great mother. For her, Angela could do no wrong. Angela was her Susan.

  Jimmy disagreed. He said Angela was a goddamn whore and a goddamn idiot for having so many goddamn brats.

  Virginia steered clear of our street for several weeks. But shortly after I began eighth grade, she started to sneak back home to see Shirley and me when Jimmy’s car was gone. That’s how I found out she had become crazy about a drummer named Dennis. One Friday night when Shirley was working and Jimmy was out clubbing, Virginia took me to see Dennis play. I put on a pink miniskirt and some white lipstick and we smoked a little pot on the way there. I didn’t feel anything from the pot, but I pretended that I did. The gorilla guarding the front door winked at me and let us right in ’cause I looked old for my age. I was jittery with excitement. When we got inside, though, my excitement took a nosedive. The joint was a real dump. It smelled like Clorox and vomit, and the floor was sticky with crud. One corner had been turned into a makeshift stage illuminated by a few dim colored lights. Dennis’s band was already playing. I could tell right away they stank. Dennis couldn’t keep a beat, but I had to admit he was pretty cute. He had ropes of dirty-blond hair that whipped his eyeballs when he drummed.

  “We’re madly in love,” said Virginia, as I watched Dennis flirting with a bunch of skanks between sets.

  “Isn’t he ever gonna come over here?” I asked.

  “He’s gotta say hi to his fans. That’s how it is when you’re dating a musician. It’s kinda hard. I’ve gotta share him with the world.”

  Dennis never came over to say hi to us, so I never did get to meet him.

  I thought I would down the road ’cause Virginia said they’d be getting married one day, possibly in Golden Gate Park.

  But a few months later, Virginia showed up at our apartment crying her eyes out. Dennis had dumped her when she tried to pressure him into moving up the date of their nuptials. She looked like she’d put on some weight and confessed to being so heartbroken she was eating Angela out of house and home.

  “Good goddamn riddance,” I said, trying to make her feel better and glad that Dennis was out of the picture.

  As the weeks passed, Virginia continued to show up crying and continued to get fatter. Finally she broke down and told Shirley and me that she might be in the family way.

  “He only put it in a little ways,” she sobbed. “He said I couldn’t get pregnant that way. He says it must be someone else’s, but it isn’t. I only did it with him ’cause I thought we were getting married.”

  “Boys only care about one thing,” moaned Shirley. “I told you that.”

  “No you didn’t. You never told me anything about the birds and the bees.”

  “I—I thought I did,” Shirley stammered.

  “I don’t want a brat,” Virginia sobbed. “I threw myself down the stairs at Angela’s but nothin’ happened.”

  “I could kill that Dennis. I could shoot him dead,” I blurted out.

  “It’s not his fault. It’s my fault,” Virginia insisted.

  “We have to tell your father,” Shirley finally said. “He’s going to find out anyway when word gets around that you’re big as a house.”

  “I might as well just kill myself,” Virginia whimpered, “before he goes and does it himself.”

  For the next few weeks I could barely concentrate in school. I was afraid I’d come home one day and find Virginia with her brains blown out. I pictured Jimmy tossing her bloated body off the Aristotle Onassis and telling people she must’ve gone to KooKooLand with all the other kooks. I racked my brain to figure a way out of the mess but couldn’t come up with anything.

  Then, one day, I came home from school and saw a note Shirley had left for Jimmy before she went to bed.

  The rabbit died the note said. I had no idea what it meant, but I found out when Jimmy got home.

  “The test came back positive. Your whore of a sister got herself knocked up. Virginia’s no goddamn virgin. But don’t tell anyone or I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”

  I acted like it was news and held my breath to see if he was going for his shotgun.

  But Jimmy had another solution.

  “I’m getting rid of that brat. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let her drag our name through the mud.”

  He got on the phone with Dr. C. Even though he was speaking in Greek, I could tell he was begging, and when that didn’t work, threatening.

  Finally, he hung up.

  “I talked him into it,” he said. “But we all have to keep our big traps shut or he could lose his license again—for good this time.”

  “I’ll keep it on a stone wall, Daddy. Forever ’n’ ever.”

  When Virginia found out Jimmy was saving her from the mess she had gotten in, she threw her arms around him, sobbing, and told him he was the best father in the whole world.

  “Get one thing straight. I’m not doin’ it for you, I’m doin’ it for me,” he said. “So I can show my face in front of Hank and my buddies. So they’re not yuk-yuk-yukking behind my goddamn back.”

  Vi
rginia nodded. She didn’t care why he was doing it or who he was doing it for. She just didn’t want the brat.

  Dr. C said it was too dangerous to do the thing at his office. YaYa and Papou were away in Greece and Jimmy had a key to their place, so he took Virginia over there. Shirley and I went along to take care of her.

  Virginia looked scared, but I told her everything would be groovy and then I spat on her.

  But things weren’t so groovy.

  Virginia had waited too long to tell anyone that she was in the family way. It turned out Dr. C couldn’t do what he usually did. He tried something else to make Virginia lose the baby. He told Jimmy he’d done the best he could and we’d just have to wait and see what happened and then he took off.

  Jimmy took off too. He didn’t want to be around any woman’s blood and Shirley said there was bound to be a lot of it.

  I suddenly felt dizzy.

  Don’t be a goddamn chicken, pluck pluck pluck, I scolded myself. Make believe it’s Karo syrup.

  Shirley offered to make Virginia and me some Greek food, but that was the last thing we wanted.

  After an hour, Virginia got a stomachache. It got a little worse and a little worse. Finally she went into the bathroom and something came out of her. She took one look at it and flushed it away.

  We were all relieved.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” Virginia said.

  Then she began to bleed. She turned white as a sheet, but the sheets weren’t white. Her temperature shot up and she moaned she was dying and screamed to be taken to the hospital.

  I started to blubber. Shirley sent me into the other room and called Jimmy.

  When Jimmy showed up, he wouldn’t take Virginia to the hospital. He’d made a pact with Dr. C not to do it.

  “You made your bed, you’ll lie in it,” he yelled at Virginia through the closed door.

  He called Dr. C and begged him to come over and see what he could do.

  It seemed like forever before Dr. C got there, but maybe it wasn’t.

  Dr. C went into the bedroom with Virginia and closed the door.

  Shirley sat there numb and Jimmy paced and I promised God I’d never do anything bad or wrong or stupid ever again if he’d just let my sister live.

  God was awake and heard me.

  The bleeding stopped and Virginia’s temperature went down. She was so weak she could barely raise her head off the pillow. Jimmy force-fed her scrambled eggs like Papou did when she was a little girl.

  She got better.

  Shirley made Dr. C a farina cake to thank him.

  Jimmy promised to trim his trees for nothing for the rest of his life.

  Dr. C said he just wanted everyone to forget the whole thing. He insisted this was really and truly the last time he would bail out any Greek’s misbehaving daughter.

  “We dodged a bullet,” Jimmy told him. “You and me, we dodged a goddamn bullet.”

  Ball and Chain

  Virginia learned her lesson. She got married a few months later, in the summer of 1968, to the first guy who asked her. He wasn’t a drummer or even a guy who pretended to be one. He was a budding marine named Wayne.

  I begged her not to do it, but she said she owed it to Jimmy for bailing her out of a jam.

  Wayne’s parents weren’t too thrilled about the wedding either. Since Jimmy had no dough and said he wouldn’t blow a big wad on a shindig even if he was loaded, Wayne’s parents had to spring for it.

  I was a bridesmaid and wore a yellow gown that Jimmy said made me look like a banana. I didn’t smile for the photos. Besides hiding my Dracula teeth, I was sad about Virginia marrying a guy who bad-mouthed hippies and was gung ho to go to Vietnam.

  I didn’t think it was a match made in heaven.

  I wasn’t even sure there was such a thing.

  I wanted to believe there was. I really did. I wanted to believe you could meet a guy like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate and run away with him from your miserable life. I wanted to believe you could love the guy and he would love you back until you both croaked. But everywhere I looked it just seemed like men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers hated each other’s guts. Everyone in the projects, sooner or later, got busted up. Everyone but Jimmy and Shirley, anyway. But if I knew one thing for sure already, it was that I didn’t want a ball and chain like Jimmy.

  I’d rather be a goddamn old maid, I thought. That wasn’t the worst thing in the world to me anymore.

  Now and then I wondered about Susan and how married life was treating her.

  One day, I found out.

  Jimmy and I had stopped off at the drugstore on our way home from a movie. Jimmy went through a fist-sized container of tranquilizers every month and was there to pick up a refill.

  Susan was getting a prescription filled too. She was in her second year of medical school and looked pretty worn out.

  “Jesus, Susan, you look like hell,” said Jimmy, who never ceased to let a person know if they were not looking their best.

  “Hi, Jimmy,” Susan smiled weakly. Then she noticed me. “Wow, you’re so grown up.”

  “Hi, Susan,” I mumbled, feeling that familiar shyness come over me.

  “She’s the same old Dracula,” Jimmy said, waving his fang fingers in front of his face.

  “And you’re the same old Jimmy,” she said. She turned back to me.

  “So what grade are you in now?”

  “Ninth. I’m finally in high school,” I said, hoping that might impress her.

  “She wanted to go where you went, Central,” Jimmy piped up. “But those pencil pushers said it was out of our district. They didn’t want a little project kid in their North End school. Well, nobody tells me where my kid goes. I checked around. My old lady’s place made it into their goddamn district, just barely. So I told ’em my kid’s living there, screw you.”

  Susan looked happy for me.

  “So, you’re living with your grandmother now?”

  “Nah, she’s still under my roof,” said Jimmy.

  “So she’s supposed to lie and not get caught for four years?”

  “Hey, she’s my daughter.” Jimmy laughed. “I taught her everything I know.”

  “I hope not,” quipped Susan, and changed the subject. “So you been in the winner’s circle lately, Jimmy?”

  “Ah, I’m mostly outta the game. I had one great horse and there’ll never be another like him, so they can keep all those other nags.”

  The truth was he was broke and couldn’t afford another nag, but that was another story.

  “Racing’s gone to hell anyway,” he added. “Did you hear Big Brother’s forcing us to have girl jockeys?”

  “Girl jockeys, girl doctors. What’s the world coming to?” replied Susan.

  “Don’t get wise, kiddo,” said Jimmy. “I know you’re a damn good rider, but trotting down country lanes, la-dee-da-dee-da, is not racing. Racing’s dangerous. And having dames out there is only gonna make it more dangerous.”

  “Danger, Will Robinson, danger,” Susan intoned, imitating the robot in Lost in Space.

  “You think it’s funny? Those girls’re gonna get some good men killed.”

  “Well, I hope not,” said Susan, becoming more serious. “There’re enough good men getting killed already.”

  “So you’re still a bleeding heart? Your old lady musta drummed that into you, ’cause it sure as hell wasn’t Hank.”

  Susan suddenly looked morose.

  “I’ve got to get going,” she finally said. “I’ve got a gazillion things to do.”

  Jimmy put his arm around her.

  “You work yourself too hard. Don’t let becoming a goddamn doctor make you sick. You don’t wanna crack up again, do you?”

  “I could use the rest,” she joked.

  Jimmy lowered his voice.

  “Your old man told me that no-good husband of yours smacked you and threw you out of a car or something.”

  Susan looked away.

 
“I can’t remember what happened exactly,” she said. “When the police found me I was unconscious. I was bruised up pretty bad.”

  I was stunned. Jimmy hadn’t said anything to me about Susan getting roughed up.

  “I’ll get somebody to teach that joker a lesson. Just say the word.”

  “Jimmy, no! We’re getting a divorce, so—”

  “I don’t like him gettin’ off scot-free.”

  “Well, two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  “Hey, don’t gimme that turn-the-other-cheek baloney. I’ve had it up to here with those suckers. I’d like to teach ’em all a lesson. Sucker Punch 101.”

  “Whoa, easy,” said Susan, patting him like he was a skittish horse. “You don’t want to crack up too.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s enough jerkos out there to drive you crazy. Enough to fill the goddamn Titanic and take you down with them.”

  Susan looked like she’d had enough of the conversation.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said again. “You steer clear of the icebergs, Jimmy.”

  “Yeah, you do the same, kid,” said Jimmy.

  He opened the container of tranquilizers and slipped a few in her pocket.

  “Just in case you need to take the edge off.”

  “Thanks,” she said, surprised. “Thanks a gazillion.”

  “C’mon, Dracula, don’t lollygag,” he barked at me.

  “Bye, Susan,” I said quickly.

  She surprised me by giving me a hug.

  “Say hi to Central,” she said, as if it was a person and she missed it.

  “I will,” I promised.

  Not long after that, I heard Susan was back in the hospital. Not the loony bin, the normal kind. Something was wrong with one of her kidneys and they had to yank it out. Jimmy read up on her condition in his medical books and said she was gonna be OK, a person could get by just fine with one kidney.

  Hank went to visit her after the operation. They were giving her morphine for the pain. He told her to just tough it out and have a drink instead. He offered her a slug of what he had in his pocket, but she didn’t take him up on it.

  After several days Susan got released from the hospital. She had to take a leave of absence from medical school to recuperate. She moved back in with Hank. I didn’t think that was such a hot idea, but I reminded myself of what all those headshrinkers had said. Hank wasn’t ever gonna murder anybody again.