Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  "Playing." And fighting, I thought.

  "With the crazy one?"

  She never used Mel's proper name. "Yeah."

  She forked the spaghetti to get a light coating of sauce all over it, to keep it from sticking to the bowl. She stopped abruptly.

  "You look different. Don't he look different?" She slapped at Angie's paper to get his attention. Annoyed, Angie eyed me.

  "Looks the same to me," he said after a glance.

  Connie continued to study me. "He's sweating! Look, look!" She pointed at my forehead with the dripping fork. I could feel giant drops of sweat forming. I also felt out of breath - the laws of my body were catching up, demanding their due.

  Connie continued pointing with the spoon as if drops of blood, not sweat, were leaking from my face.

  "Ah, it's only sweat, Connie," I said, wiping my face with my forearm. "What are you getting all excited about?"

  "Go wash." She pointed toward the bathroom with the fork, as if I didn't know where it was. "All the way up to here, mister." She tapped my elbow, leaving a red sauce streak there.

  I let the water run cold for a few minutes. Meanwhile I just looked at myself in the mirror. Connie was right - I did look different, and not only because my face was tomato-red with heat. My eyes looked darker, deeper-set in my skull, and my head seemed longer, as if it were somehow losing its cesarean roundness.

  I bared my teeth and frightened myself with my own image. I put the plug in the basin, filled it, and threw cold water on my face, knowing the red would go away but not the new look Connie had so perceptively caught.

  Confidence. I'd just beaten the daylights out of a fellow human being, and was now preparing to sit down to a meal as if I'd been out shooting marbles. A feast for a conquering hero. I knew I would never be the same.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Early in July we were hit by a blistering heat wave. Stickball was out of the question. It was too hot to even draw on the sidewalk. All Mel and I had the energy for was lemon ice.

  Angie's garage was always cool, no matter how hot it got. We went in there and pulled the sectioned door down behind us, then sat on his toolboxes to enjoy the ices. The air was rich with smells of motor oil and grease. Huge plumbing tools hung on the walls about us, looking like instruments of torture.

  Enormous daddy-longleg spiders picked their way across the cinder-block walls. Mel absentmindedly caught one and began pulling its legs off, holding each severed leg in her fingers until the twitching stopped.

  "Cut it out," I said. In the gloom of the garage Mel's cruel act seemed even worse than it was. It wasn't a big deal for me to challenge her, not since I'd beaten the shit out of Jack Don­nelly.

  "Cut what out?" She was being kittenish and continued pull­ing off legs until there was just one left. She held the maimed creature for an instant before flinging it toward me.

  It landed smack in my lemon ice. Disgusted, I dashed it out with my fingertips, then brought my toe down on the bulbous body to take him out of his misery.

  "You stupid," I said. She laughed scornfully.

  "It's just a bug, Joey."

  "Yeah? Well I can't eat my lemon ice now."

  "Give it to me." She held one paper cup in each hand, alternating sucks. I wondered if she'd planned it all that way.

  "Rosemary cried last night," she said suddenly. "Said she's gonna be an old maid."

  "Why?"

  "'Cause Vic ain't writin' to her. He's gonna find someone else while he's away and fall in love."

  Family loyalty rose like sap in my blood. "Vic can do whatever he wants."

  "They had plans, damn it!"

  "Rosemary had plans."

  "Ah, you suck," Mel said. She noisily slurped the rest of the ices and tossed the wadded cups aside. "Well, I don't get to be a bridesmaid, then."

  "Big deal."

  "Joey."

  "What?"

  "What do you look like?"

  I peered at her face, trying to catch the joke. Streaks of dirt ran down her sweaty face and her mouth was slightly open. Light that filtered through the dirty garage window made her face spooky-looking.

  "I look like this," I said, confused.

  But that wasn't what she meant. I'd been getting funny looks ever since I'd beaten up Jack and Phil made me swear on my balls that I wouldn't hit him. I wasn't a punk kid from Long Island anymore.

  "That ain't what I mean."

  "What do you mean?"

  "With no clothes on."

  My teeth clenched and my heart leapt. "Ja ever see a girl naked?" she whispered.

  I'd never even seen a man naked. "Nope."

  "Never?"

  "Did you ever see a man?" I said defensively.

  "Nah. I opened the door once when my uncle was takin' a bath but there were a lot of soap bubbles."

  "How come you're askin' all this?"

  "No reason." A menacing smile nearly hypnotized me, and then her arms flashed in a tangle of white and she whipped her shirt off. She balled it up and used it to wipe a lone drop of sweat running down the middle of her chest.

  I might have been looking in a mirror. Mel was somewhat more muscular than I was but otherwise we were the same. When she inhaled, her ribs appeared. The bumps that had shown against her wet T-shirt at the fire hydrant were hardly visible in the flesh.

  "We shouldn't do this," I said.

  She giggled. "We're not doin' nothin'. It's hot. Come on. You."

  A challenge. Who could resist her challenges? My fingers found the back of my T-shirt. Momentarily it clung to my wet back but I managed to get it off.

  "We're the same," I announced.

  "Well, I'm too young to have tits," she apologized. Already her fingers were working the zipper on her pants. When she got them unzipped she pushed them down along with her un­derpants, one motion. She stepped out of them and knocked them aside with her foot.

  I looked at her groin, a pink envelope of flesh. It was some­thing to laugh at but I didn't "You," she said. Half command, half suggestion.

  My hands were sweat-wet, and they shook so much they kept slipping off my belt buckle. Outside cars honked, fire engines wailed. They wailed so often it seemed amazing that all of Brooklyn wasn't rubble. . . .

  But they may as well have been on the moon, for all they had to do with us. I finally got the belt undone, but before taking my pants down I looked into Mel's eyes. They had never looked so kind before — nothing goading, nothing I-dare-you about them. She stood with a hand on her hip, as if she were awaiting a bus. I was a sparrow on the verge of flying off; so she was careful not to startle me.

  Closing my eyes, I followed her example and yanked down pants and underpants at once. My scrotum had shrunk to a dried fig. My cock was like a doorbell, just the tip show­ing.

  "It's usually bigger than that." I was talking more to myself than to her.

  "Mine's always the same size. I mean, it's just sort of like a hole, ya know? I can't aim when I pee or nothin'."

  "Uh-huh . . ."

  "Shit. Boys always get the neatest stuff."

  We were looking into each other's eyes. All we had on was our sneakers. Mel approached me, her feet crunching on the gravelly garage floor. She put out one finger and touched the tip of my cock, pressing it as if it were a doorbell she meant to ring.

  "Wow! It's like a sponge!" she exclaimed, jerking her hand away. I covered my tingling organ with my hand and felt it shrink, as if it were having the opposite of an erection.

  My other hand reached for her chest, fingers outspread. My fingertips touched the circumference of her left breast. I drew them together and let them squeeze her bud of a nipple, gently: it was hard as a coin, the size of one of those pink button candies we bit off sheets of paper. Mel shuddered as if she feared I might hurt her. I yanked my hand away.

  "Well," I said.

  "Well yourself."

  Our voices were both shaky. "You can touch my other thing if ya want, Joey."

  "Nah. We shoul
d get dressed now."

  "Okay. Are you embarrassed?"

  "Nah."

  "Me neither." As we bent to pick up our clothes we giggled with relief.

  A fist rapped on the garage door. Petrified, we looked at each other, and then the door pulled open, sections of it rattling as they slid into the metal tracks over our heads. Light caught us at our feet, knees, and torsos, just like a curtain going up on actors. We squinted at the long, thin form of Deacon David Sullivan.

  "I heard voices," he began airily, but he stopped dead when he saw us. His eyes widened to baseballs. His knees even bent with momentary weakness. I think I would have felt less em­barrassed if I'd been totally naked, instead of with my sneakers on. Sullivan jerked the door down halfway.

  "Get dressed."

  We did, rapidly. I plunged my foot into my pants three times before finding the leg. Mel was crying. I would have, too, but my entire body - mouth, eyes, armpits - had gone dry.

  "Are you dressed?" Sullivan demanded a minute later. I told him we were. Mel choked when she tried to talk.

  He yanked the door all the way open, grabbed us by our wrists, and pulled us down the driveway. The sun felt hot on my head, as if Connie were pressing her iron on my scalp. The deacon's strength shocked me. His thin fingers were wrapped tightly around my wrist, like piano wire. It hurt, and I'm sure Mel was hurting, too, but neither of us made a sound all the way down Shepherd Avenue, across Atlantic Avenue, and into the empty church.

  Like a couple of hooked fish we were tugged to the front of the church and dumped in the front pew, directly in front of a rack filled with burning red candles in cups.

  The deacon must have thought he'd stumbled upon a brand new perversion. Certainly he'd never bared himself to anyone as a child. Maybe he hadn't done it as an adult, either.

  He leaned against the pew to catch his breath. "Stay here. I'll be right back." His hard heels clicked on the marble floor, echoing all the way out. The doors boomed behind him with the finality of the gates to hell. We were alone.

  The church smells were deeper and cooler with the place empty. Incense blended with burning beeswax and dust to form the smell of death. Now and then we heard cars beeping in the distance and were reminded of our entrapment. Escape wasn't even a possibility to consider.

  Mel finally said, "We're in trouble."

  "I told you we shouldn't have," I scolded.

  "But we didn't do it!"

  "Didn't do what?"

  She was quiet, briefly. "I don't know. But whatever it was, he thinks we did it."

  "We'll tell him," I said. "We just wanted to see. He can't get mad at that."

  "Don'tcha think he'll be mad anyway? This is it, Joey, this is it!" Mel shrieked.

  I didn't dare ask what "it" was. For all we knew Sullivan was out fetching an axe to chop our heads off at the altar. I looked wildly around the church. Statues leered at us. A huge crucifix behind the altar seemed grotesque, complete with blood at Christ's hands, feet, forehead, and belly.

  And he was a good guy. If they did that to him, what was in store for us?

  Mel's face dropped into her hands. "Oh, God. Oh, God."

  Clumsily I laid my arm across her shoulders. She didn't respond to my touch but she didn't push me away, either. Her body was stiff as wood.

  "Boy, do I hate that guy," I said. "I hated him the minute I saw him."

  Her shoulders shuddered. "You're my best friend," she said into her hands.

  "You're my only friend," I said. It was true. We were each saying good-bye without even knowing it.

  I took my arm off Mel when I heard the church doors open. Deacon Sullivan's heels didn't sound as loud as before because he was keeping pace with two slow people, Connie and Rose­mary.

  The three of them stared solemnly. I felt as if I were still naked.

  Rosemary was ashen. Connie's lips were tight but otherwise she looked the same as usual. I'd seen that face on her before, when she broke the yolk of an egg she was frying. There were rings of flour at her wrists, powdery bracelets where she hadn't wiped far enough.

  "I didn't know where to bring them," Sullivan said. "I took them here on an impulse. Maybe I acted in haste. . . ."

  His voice trailed off but neither woman urged him to con­tinue. They probably weren't listening, anyway.

  Rosemary suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Mel by the hair.

  "Whaddya got to say?" she yelled. "You proud of yourself, lady?"

  An incredibly shrill voice. She seemed to be imitating a parrot.

  "No," Mel said, wincing in pain.

  Rosemary gave the hair a tug. "I didn't hear you."

  "No!" The single syllable boomed off the walls and the ceil­ing. Rosemary nodded.

  "Your mother and father get killed, we take you in. Do you eat good? Do you sleep in a nice room? Do we buy you nice clothes so you can go and take them off in front of people?"

  "One person," Mel corrected.

  Rosemary let go of Mel's hair and used the same hand to slap her face. Mel's eyes watered. A moment later she was gagging and dry-heaving.

  "Not in church, not in church!" Rosemary said, grabbing Mel's wrist, yanking her out of the pew, and dragging her out­side.

  Connie turned to Sullivan and said calmly, "You can go now."

  He looked puzzled. "I hope I did the right thing - "

  "Please," Connie said, "just leave." It was strange to see her taking command in the only building that could intimidate her - in effect, she was kicking Sullivan out of his own house. But he left, dismissed like a messenger.

  She sat beside me. "Don't touch me," I warned - a funny thing to say, considering that she never touched me. But she laced her fingers together to show she wouldn't. I began to cry.

  "We didn't do anything. We just took our clothes off and looked."

  She noticed the flour on her wrists and dusted herself off. "Why were you in there?"

  "It was hot outside. We had lemon ice."

  "Didja touch each other?"

  "Only a little."

  She broke her unspoken promise and cupped a warm hand on my knee. Before I could protest she said, "I'm making lentil soup. Spinach and tomatoes in it, the way you like it, and then later there's ice cream."

  She spoke in the same idle fashion she used to pass the time while cooking!

  "Your grandfather'll be home in a few hours," she said, shift­ing the responsibility. "You talk to him."

  "I want my mother," I sobbed, plunging my face into my hands. Even dead, she seemed more reachable than my father.

  Connie patted my knee. "She's dead. Let's have soup now, you'll feel better."

  Somehow, I did.

  After eating I fell asleep on the basement couch. I didn't awaken until I heard the screen door bang. Angie came in and set his lunch pail down, said "Hey" to Connie in lieu of a kiss (I never saw them kiss), and asked what was wrong - he must have sensed it from her expression.

  They spoke in soft tones. I feigned sleep well, lying there and watching through narrowly slit eyelids. I saw Angie's eyebrows jump.

  "They do anything?" he asked.

  "What could they do?" Connie hissed. "He's only ten!"

  Angie chuckled. "You forget, he's Italian."

  "That's disgusting!"

  They talked a little while longer, and then Connie set his place at the table while he washed up.

  "Wake him, talk to him," Connie said when he returned from the bathroom. A cloud of Lava soap filled my nose, and then his hand was brushing hair away from my forehead.

  "Don't worry," he said. Exactly the words I needed to hear to fall back asleep.

  Mel didn't do as well with her family. Three days later, she was gone from Shepherd Avenue for good.

  A scenario was planned and cunningly executed. The neigh­bors were told that Mel's relatives out in Patchogue, Long Island, wanted her to come and live with them, since they'd bought a brand new house with lots of rooms and a big backyard. In truth the Patchogue relat
ives had to be bullied into taking her, the argument ending when Rosemary's mother said, "It's your turn."

  I didn't even get to say good-bye. I found out about it on the fourth day. We were torn apart the way concentration camp families were by the Nazis.

  I missed her and I missed myself, the self I had been before the incident in the garage. What was the matter with me? Did other kids do what I'd done? I had to get in touch with Mel. Before going to face Rosemary I put on a clean T-shirt and wet-combed my hair. Looking down at my feet, I decided to wear my good shoes. As I rubbed black polish on them I worked out my speech:

  "Please give me Mel's address so I can write her a letter." In and out of Rosemary's house. I'd get the words out before she could slam the door in my face.

  As I walked down the block my armpits felt dry, though the sun was bright and hot. The heat had chased everyone inside, and the street silence accentuated the pounding of my heart.

  Mel's clumsy chalk drawings still covered the sidewalks. They would remain until the next rainfall. Stubborn to the end, she continued drawing horses with the hind legs bent the wrong way.

  I climbed her old stoop and rang the bell. The door curtain parted. I glimpsed Rosemary's wide face. One eye squinted, then the curtain fell back in place.

  The lock turned and the door swung inward. I was standing so close to it that I felt air being sucked in from all around me. "What do you want?"

  "Please give me Mel's address so I can send her a letter I wrote." My original speech, slightly altered.

  Rosemary thrust out a flour-coated arm. On one of the hottest days of the summer she was baking, probably something to send to Vic. Warm smells of butter and sugar wafted out the door. "Give me the letter, I'll send it."

  "I . . . don't have it."

  "What?"

  "I...didn't write it yet."

  "You just told me you wrote her a letter. Now you say you didn't. Joey, can't you stop telling lies?"

  I bit my lip, fought for balance. My buttocks tightened. "Please just give me the address, Rosemary," I pleaded, hating the whine in my voice.

  "When you finally do write this letter, bring it to me and I'll send it."

  "I don't wanna do it that way."

  "You don't trust me?"