Even before Chris told me about my deformity, I already suspected there was something different about me. Unlike other boys who had narrow hips and straight legs, I had a small waist, thick thighs, a protruding behind, and freakishly large calves. In order for me to fit into boys’ pants, my mother had to purchase them two sizes larger in the waist so I could get the pant legs over my thighs. Then I had to cinch my belt as tight as it would go, otherwise they would be too loose. The end result made me look like a garbage bag left out on the curb.
Billy the Kid understood boys with “girly curves” and made sizes that fit different body types perfectly. Looking back, their pants were probably cut from a pattern that would have fit an overweight woman. They just branded their pants with that signature red-white-and-blue label so no one would know.
“Ma’am, you really should try Sears. They carry Billy the Kid,” repeated the woman from Korvette’s. Suspicious, my mother scowled and then marched away.
“I don’t believe her,” she said to the air in front of her.
I grabbed my father by the hand and pleaded, “Can we go look at the toys now?” He wrinkled his brow and shook his head. I could tell he was frustrated, following after my mother, who had us searching up and down the aisles for nearly an hour, like Ponce de León for the mythic fountain of jeans. When she finally conceded defeat, I swiftly navigated my parents to the toy section.
Immediately, I went for the Evel Knievel foldout camper/recreational vehicle (also known as the “Scramble Van”). I’d had my eye on that Scramble Van for months, ever since I saw the commercial on television. It came fully equipped with a gasoline can, toolbox, cycle jack and grease gun, fire extinguisher, and a captain’s chair to give it the “final touch.”
I was a huge Evel Knievel fan, and I can recall the precise moment when my obsession began: I was watching a rebroadcast of his famous jump over fourteen Greyhound buses. Dressed in a white Spandex jumpsuit with stars and red and blue stripes that crisscrossed over his torso, he was a superhero come to life.
Right before the actual jump, Evel revved his engine to a fever pitch, silencing the roaring crowd as they collectively held their breath. Then he bolted up the ramp, leaving a cloud of gray smoke behind, and within seconds, he and his motorcycle took flight. I sat up on my knees, watching as if it were all happening in slow motion. Flashbulbs flickered like blinking Christmas lights in the stands as he sailed over the first, then the second bus. Evel leaned back in his seat, pulling the handlebars toward his chest, and soared even higher—over three, four, five buses. The entire journey was outlined in the air as one single perfect arc until he descended gracefully on the other side. The wheels screeched as they came in contact with the ramp, igniting a frenzy of cheers from the spectators in the stands and me at home. That day, I decided that I wanted to be just like Evel Knievel, flying through the air, but without the threat of a fiery crash or possibility of dismemberment.
“A mess,” said my mother, pointing to the box with the foldout camper. “He will make a mess all over my rug if you buy that for him. He doesn’t need that. He needs pants.”
We were in a deadlock: Evel Knievel versus Billy the Kid. As my father listened to my mother, he glanced woefully at my face. I fought back with the most sincere expression I could muster and held his gaze in the hopes of distracting him from my mother’s argumentative grip. He looked at me, my mother, and then back to me. Suddenly, it was all over: with one swift hoist, my father grabbed the box containing the Scramble Van, plucked an action figure from the metal hook, and proceeded to the checkout counter. It was a grandiose gesture, one that Evel Knievel would have been proud of himself.
While my father valiantly strode toward the cashier, I clenched my fist in quiet victory. My mother, however, wasn’t ready to accept her defeat. Standing with one hand on her hip, she leaned in close so that our faces were barely inches apart. When my father was far enough away that he couldn’t hear her, she said, “If I find just one of those pieces on my rug, I am going to throw the whole thing in the garbage.” I glanced away and watched as my father paid the cashier. “Do you understand me?” she insisted. I nodded, knowing all too well the subtext of her warning. This entire situation had nothing to do with pants, Evel Knievel, or the Scramble Van. My mother was concerned that her husband had just bought his son a doll.
Six months earlier, my mother had discovered a partially amputated Barbie behind our couch in the den. I rescued her from my best friend Diane’s garbage pail. Secretly, I played with her on several occasions. Dolls fascinated me. This Barbie was damaged. Her long blonde hair was matted, and she had only one leg. I was intrigued by the way her knee could be forced to hyperextend in the opposite direction, making her even more deformed.
Diane and her sister Karen lived directly around the corner from us, and our backyards met up perfectly. Had my father not erected a garish brick wall around the entire perimeter of our property, our two yards would have looked like a giant playground with sloping little hills of grass.
Of course, my mother did not approve of our friendship. She didn’t think it was appropriate for me to have “girl friends,” particularly when I didn’t play with the other boys in the neighborhood. But they were the two nicest people I knew. Diane was my age and had fair skin and blonde hair. She wore cat’s-eye glasses with light blue frames. Karen, younger but taller than Diane, had dark hair. Unlike Diane, who was gentle and reserved, Karen was aggressive. I remember she cried often and had fits of anger, which Diane explained was due to her being hyperactive. Their parents were divorced, and Diane and Karen lived with their older sister, Christine; their mother, Ellen; and her husband, Al, in a butter-yellow and chocolate-brown split-level duplex on Hewitt Avenue.
I was in love with Diane and hoped to marry her one day. She had the sweetest disposition of anyone I’d ever met and accepted me the way I was, unlike all the other kids at school. The day they moved in, I spied on them through the blinds of the sliding glass doors that looked out at their yard. I watched the way Diane and her family waved good-bye to the movers. When I saw her that first time, I knew I was in love.
To their credit, both Diane and Karen were not girly girls. We were adventurers and enjoyed trips into the woods nearby our homes. Beyond their street, a development of two-family houses had been under construction for months. We investigated the concrete foundations after the workers went home for the day, and we collected wood, which we used to make a fort near my house. That was a long time ago, a time when rabbits and lizards ran among the dirt roads beyond our neighborhood.
Diane and Karen probably played with dolls when they were alone together, but never with me. One day I walked into their room; Diane was listening to her Bay City Rollers’ album. She loved the song “Saturday Night,” and played it over and over. I found her sprawled out on her bed, piled high with stuffed animals and copies of Tiger Beat, a magazine of the latest teen idols. I always pretended I wasn’t interested in listening to their boy-band albums. As Diane flipped through the pages of her magazine, I watched over her shoulder. Karen was cleaning out her closet, shouting the lyrics. “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, night!”
I first discovered the dismembered Barbie in a pink tin pail underneath Diane’s desk. When I fished her out of the trash and held her up by her hair, Diane stuck out her tongue. “Eww, that’s Karen’s. She broke her and stuffed her in the back of the closet.”
“No, I didn’t,” yelled Karen, still rummaging through her clothes.
“Can I have her?” I asked.
They laughed. “Why?”
“So I can twirl her by the hair like a helicopter,” I said.
Diane looked curiously at Karen and then back at me. “No. Broken Barbies go in the trash.” Then she stood up, took it from my hand, and dropped it back into the pink can. Later, when neither sister was looking, I retrieved Barbie from the trash and stuffed her in my jacket pocket.
Barbie lived in between my mattress and box spring for days. Then one af
ternoon, when I was home alone, I took her down to the den and played with her as I listened to the Beatles on my sister’s stereo. I was fascinated by her—the matted hair, that faraway stare, and those perfectly voluptuous breasts. But it was the articulation of her knee joint that had me obsessed, almost to the point that I wanted to dissect her to see what made her move. Just as I was about to get out my doctor’s bag, I heard the sound of the garage door opening. I panicked and threw Barbie behind the couch. Just then, my mother and Josephine appeared on the landing. “Well, don’t just stand there,” shouted Josephine. “Help us with the rest of the groceries.”
Obliging, I forgot about Barbie.
Then, one Saturday morning, I awoke to the sound of my mother vacuuming. Grabbing my pillow off the mattress, I molded it over my head to cover my ears. Suddenly I remembered that my mother always pulled the couch away from the wall to vacuum behind it. Just as I made that connection, I heard determined steps on the stairs. Without even a knock, my mother burst through the door, dangling poor Barbie by her hair. “What’s this?” she demanded. I cowered pitifully under my Evel Knievel blanket, pulling it up and under my eyes. “What’s this doing in my house?” My mother took two intimidating steps forward and waved poor Barbie in front of my face. “Frank, I’m not in the moon,” she warned, as her Italian accent thickened with anger. She intended to say “mood,” but I knew what she meant. “Where did you get this?”
“It belongs to Diane,” I whispered. “She must have left it here when she came over.”
Her eyes darted back and forth, staring directly into mine, as if she was searching for evidence of a lie there. I held her stare as long as I could, but my eyes burned so deeply I was forced to blink. Then the corners of my mother’s mouth wrinkled upward in a crooked smile. Meanwhile, Barbie swung from side to side like some talisman my mother was using to will me into telling her the truth.
“I don’t want you to see those girls anymore. Do you understand? And if I find another doll in this house, I am going to send you to military school.”
After that day, my mother refused to buy me any toy that remotely resembled a doll, not even an action figure or army man. That was the price I paid for stealing a rejected Barbie doll from my best friend’s garbage can. My act of thievery destroyed what little chance I had of convincing my mother to purchase that Evel Knievel action figure and Scramble Van. I was able to persuade my father only because he was as big of a fan of Evel’s as I was.
CHAPTER 14
Charmed by a Fox
THE WEEK AFTER MY VICTORY AT KORVETTE’S, I found myself once again driving with my parents one Saturday afternoon in search of Billy the Kid pants. This time we were on our way to the Staten Island Mall. My mother had decided to try our luck at Sears.
The Staten Island Mall was located directly across the street from the Fresh Kills Landfill—a sanitation dump. This particular landfill had the distinction of being the largest in the world. As we stepped out of the car that day, the stench was overwhelming and worse than usual because of the humidity. A wall of dirt approximately twenty feet tall formed a barrier around the landfill, obstructing the view of the dump. Seagulls and other predatory birds gathered overhead like a shifting, menacing cloud, emitting high-pitched screeches.
During the spring and summer months, the sun baked the landfill. Fumes rose up from the enormous heap, distorting the air like a haze from a gasoline spill. Noxious vapors traveled across Richmond Avenue, enveloping the mall and blanketing the entire parking lot from spring well into fall. “How do people live near here?” asked my mother as she hurried ahead, clutching her pocketbook in the crook of her armpit while she held her nose. She said this every time we visited the mall.
Chris Reynolds told me that the Fresh Kills Landfill covered over two thousand acres. “My dad said you can see it from space because it’s taller than the Statue of Liberty.” I didn’t share his enthusiasm. Having the bragging rights that we lived on an island with the largest dump in the world wasn’t something I was proud of. It was, however, another reason why I felt I had to leave Staten Island when I was old enough.
Inside, my eyes were immediately drawn toward the center of the mall. Just three months earlier, this had been the exact location of Santa’s Village. I could still recall the wads of white cotton that blanketed the perimeter of the square. Christmas trees of various sizes, adorned with colorful ornaments, candy canes, and sparkling silver tinsel, were placed in clusters at strategic areas, some reaching as high as the second tier of the mall. Garland hung from the railings above, scalloping the entire square like luscious gold icing on a giant Christmas cake. I loved visiting the mall during the holidays. The scent of nutmeg and cinnamon filled the air, in sharp contrast with the putrid smell outside. The square bustled with shoppers for weeks—as early as November and then right up until those last few days before Christmas.
Except now this once-hallowed place was occupied by the eerie presence of boys dressed in matching green uniforms, red felt berets, and neckerchiefs affixed to their eager necks with fleur-de-lis silver scarf rings. Instead of clamoring children, tethered to their parents’ hands as they forged ahead for a chance to sit on Santa’s lap, there were rowdy young boys, tying knots with rope and practicing oaths with their right hands held up at ninety degrees to display three stiff frozen fingers. These foreigners had infested the mall like an army of ants.
My first instinct was to run, to avoid being accosted by these boys, but my mother’s eyes had already glazed over. Her pupils dilated to the size of pennies. Intuitively sensing my apprehension, she reached out to grab my arm before I had a chance to flee. As I was dragged helplessly toward them, I looked over my shoulder at my father following behind us. He did not intervene this time. My mother was on a mission, so I succumbed.
Just ahead, folding tables were set up with banners draped over them, delineating the Scout troops by number. My mother walked up to the nearest one. Two seated men were dressed in similar adult-sized Scout uniforms. One wore wire-framed glasses and a hat that made him look like a state trooper. They smiled as we approached. “Here,” said my mother, pushing me forward. “Sign him up.” The two men looked at each other and smiled.
“Well, okay,” said the one wearing the trooper hat and glasses. “Why don’t you start by telling me your son’s name?”
“Well?” she said, nudging me in the back. “Answer the man.”
“Frank,” I muttered with my head held down.
“Well, Frank, do you want to learn more about the Boy Scouts?” he asked.
My mother responded for me: “Yes, he does.”
I turned back one more time to look at my father, pleading with the same expression I used on him at Korvette’s department store, but he just stood there, resigned, his hands held behind his back.
“Is that your dad, Frank?”
“Angelo,” yelled my mother. “Come here. Why are you standing all the way over there?”
My father obeyed.
“Pleasure to meet you, sir. Is this your son?”
“Yeah, he’s mine.”
“Well, that’s great that you brought him here, because you know Scouting isn’t just for your son. I’m the Scoutmaster of Troop 284 in Huguenot, and I thoroughly recommend that the fathers get involved, as well. Now, first off, what is your name, sir?”
“Angelo.”
“Well, Angelo, I am Scoutmaster Hynes, and this is Assistant Scoutmaster Peterson, and like I said, we run Troop 284. Now, where do you folks live?”
“We live in Sunny Side near Clove Lakes Park.”
“But more near Todt Hill,” interjected my mother. That was the rich neighborhood next to where we lived.
“Okay, well, that’s a problem. You see, you need to find the troop closest to your home. Troop 284 is all the way on the other side of the island. You see that table over there?” He pointed to a banner that read TROOP 85. “You need to speak to their Scoutmaster. His name is Bill Fox.”
&n
bsp; Without even a good-bye, my mother squeezed my arm and yanked me directly across the square. Standing behind the table was a formidable man wearing a Scout uniform with his arms folded across his chest. He maintained an attentive pose while three young boys, about my age, sat on the floor in front of him, tying knots. As we approached, he looked at my mother. He had deep-set blue eyes that peered out from under thick black eyebrows. His receding jet-black hair framed the crown of his head like an ebony laurel wreath. When his eyes fell upon me, I felt a tingle run down my back. He frightened me to death.
“My son wants to be a Boy Scout,” announced my mother. “Are you the man in charge?”
He smiled. “That depends on who you’re looking for,” he said.
“That man over there told us you were in charge of the Boy Scouts for all of Sunny Side,” she explained, pointing back to the man wearing the trooper hat. “He said we should talk to you.” My mother was talking so loudly that the three boys stopped tying knots to look up at her. I wanted to crawl under the table.
“Let’s try this,” said the man with the blue eyes. “I’m Bill Fox, the Scoutmaster of Troop 85. We meet at St. Sylvester’s School every Tuesday night. Do you know where that is?”
“My son goes to St. Sylvester’s!” My mother had a hysterical look in her eyes. “Frank, did you hear that? They meet at your school!”
“I heard, and so did everyone else,” I said. The three boys tying knots began to giggle. I wanted to run away.
“Fine parish, that St. Sylvester’s,” said Bill, “and Monsignor McGinn is a close friend of the family. He was a great mentor to me growing up. You know, I almost became a priest at one point, Mrs . . . ?”
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