by Dennis Smith
The art teacher arrives, and the class stands to greet her, singing, “Good morning, Mrs. Gray.”
Mrs. Gray is a woman almost as wide as the blackboard, and she has hairs growing under her chin. She may not be pretty like Mommy, or happy like Sister Stella, but everyone in the class always likes to be with her. She has this way of drawing pictures on the easel she carries from class to class, and it is something like a magic show. She creates things so quickly. She can draw a boy catching a homer, or a girl running through a field, faster than a magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat. She makes outlines of figures first with a charcoal, and then she colors them in. I so wish I could do that, make something come to life with nothing more than a little piece of charcoal.
“Pastels,” Mrs. Gray says. “Today we are going to learn how to use pastels. And I have a set of pastels here for each of you.”
Petey Poscullo gives them out, and I open the box. There are six colors, like chalk, but square instead of round. I touch one and the color stains my finger with just the smallest touch. I have never had a box of real artist’s colors, just the crayon box that Mommy always brings out when I am sick with a cold and in bed.
Mrs. Gray has put a large sheet of clean paper on her easel and begins to draw the outline of a house.
“What color should I use?” someone in the back calls out.
“Any color you like,” Mrs. Gray answers. “We are going to draw a barn on the side of a hill in the countryside.”
“Are there barns in Central Park?” Robert Reilly asks.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Gray says. “But this one is in the country where there are cows and chickens and lots of trees. I am going to make my barn red, because that is the way I remember it, but you can make it anything you like.”
“Even blue?” Barbara Cavazzine asks.
“Sure, blue would be nice.”
“How about brown?” Diane Gillespie asks.
“A brown barn sounds exciting.”
I am not so sure about the color of my barn, and so I begin to copy the shapes the way Mrs. Gray is doing on her easel. I begin to make my barn red, like hers. Only hers looks like a real barn, with boards going across the sides, and mine looks like a red box. But I can suddenly see how the colors are folding into one another, and the lines get thick or thin depending on how hard I press down on the pastel. I forget about everything as I fill in the greens of the trees and the field. It is so much fun, and I definitely fall into the category of happy learning as I make the picture look something like a real barn in a real field with real trees. I study the picture a little, take the yellow pastel stick in my hand, and dab at the side of the barn.
I look over at Marilyn Rolled, and I see that she has made a swell picture, which looks a lot like Mrs. Gray’s barn. She could be a great artist, I am thinking as I make wide stripes of yellow. A great artist with skinny legs.
I am in the middle of 56th Street now, and my yellow barn is rolled up and tied with a rubber band. I see Billy just in front of me, and I run to catch up with him. He is still limping a little.
“How are you?” I ask.
“All right.”
“Why did you write those curses, anyway?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, Richie Gilmore did.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mommy that?”
We are on the stoop now, and Billy pushes the big, red, glass and wood door open. He holds it for me.
“Because,” he says as I pass, “I let him write it there, and I didn’t rip the page out. Why should I get him in trouble for something that I could have avoided in the first place?”
“But Richie Gilmore is a brizzer,” I say, “and who cares if he gets in trouble?”
We are on the stairs now, taking them one by one, slowly. Billy laughs, and punches me lightly on the shoulder.
“That,” he says, “is beside the point, Dennis.”
It is much later now, and I am lying on the top bunk. It is dark, and I guess Mommy and Billy are asleep. I can hear two cats battling it out down in the backyards, and then all is quiet. I can think better in the quiet. I am still trying to figure out what it is that is beside the point.
Chapter Nine
Mommy is punishing me because I was ten minutes late for dinner yesterday, and so I cannot go to Kips this afternoon. I would have been on time, but Mr. Dempsey asked me to sweep the store again. I thought he would give me a quarter or even more, but I only got a dime. It wasn’t worth a dime to be kept from going to Kips. Instead, I have to sit around Mrs. Grayson’s apartment on Sutton Place while Mommy works the vacuum and washes Mrs. Grayson’s clothes in the sink.
She puts on a housecoat over her skirt and sweater. It has so many flowers that it looks like wallpaper. As she buttons it up she tells me to sit in a kitchen chair and to read my book.
“I don’t have a book,” I say.
Mommy takes a book from her bag and hands it to me. It is a library book, Hans Brinker, a book about a person in another country where there is a lot of ice on the ground. It snows sometimes on 56th Street, but there is never any ice. Slush comes with the snow.
You can always tell a library book because the corners are usually popping out with frayed cardboard, and I think of a new book and new snow, and how quickly both get dirty. I don’t think I have ever seen a new book, one that has never been read before. I take this book and begin to read it. I have read most of it before, and soon I am rooting for this Hans guy to win the ice skating race. All the time, I am watching Mommy out of the corner of my eye. She keeps running from room to room, whistling and carrying things. She is mopping, and dusting, and lifting photographs from the piano. I’d like to try the piano, but I know Mrs. Grayson wouldn’t like that, because I once opened a bottle of Coke there and she made Mommy pay for it, and so anything of hers was not mine. That’s what Mommy said.
In the kitchen Mommy puts the washboard in the sink and runs the water. There is a mound of clothes on the floor, blouses, pants, underwear. Mrs. Grayson is very old, and so I don’t care much about her underwear. But the idea of underwear on the floor makes me think about Sue Flanagan. I know I would like the underwear if the underwear belonged to Sue Flanagan. Sue Flanagan always wears those sweaters that are so thin and tight you can see the complete outline of her brassiere, and I know I would like to see Sue Flanagan’s brassiere.
I stood next to Mommy. She is sweating, and looks tired from so much running from room to room, and from the washing.
“Can I help you, Mommy?” I say, dropping the book on the table. “Could I wash those things for you?”
“Go read your book,” Mommy says. “Boys don’t do people’s wash. Especially little boys. They read books if they know what’s good for them.”
I am always reading books, anyway, and so I don’t know why she won’t let me help her. Mommy is now scrubbing up and down the washboard, and her eyes are closed. Up and down, she goes, up and down, like she is exercising.
It is too bad that Daddy isn’t better. It’s too bad that he doesn’t have the good legs so that he can go to work, and Mommy could go to one of the parks down by the river, like the other women on 56th Street. And Mommy could sit there and read magazines, and knit, and talk about the Italian kids who wear pegged pants and get away with murder by their parents, and the way everything at Rossi’s store is so expensive. And Daddy could come home at night and talk about the actors in Hollywood like Ronald Reagan, who was complaining in the Congress house about communists in the movies, but I don’t know what communists are except they are bad and we pray against them in school, and about Jimmy Stewart, who was always talking about feeding the poor starving children in Europe, but they never mention Ireland, only Italy and India and China, even though I know that China is not in Europe. And I could talk to Daddy about the Dodgers being in Cuba for spring training and how come the Dodgers couldn’t just practice underneath the 59th Street Bridge the way we do at the Poli
ce Athletic League games.
“Mommy,” I ask, “could you buy me a new book someday, a brand-new one without anybody’s fingerprints all over it?”
“You mean,” Mommy says, “wouldI buy you a new book, not could.And my answer is that there are so many books in the library you should read first. After you read all of the library books, we can think about a new book. Okay?”
“Okay, Mommy.”
“Now,” Mommy says, like she has just finished something. She is standing with her hands on her hips looking around the kitchen in Mrs. Grayson’s house. “The kitchen floor once over, and we can go home.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, Dennis?”
“I think I read all the books in the library already.”
“You’re full of soup, Dennis. You haven’t read all the books in the library.”
“How many more do I have to go?”
Mommy’s hands are still on her hips. She looks like a model in a magazine because she is thin and curvy. She’s smiling now, and her long brown hair swings back on her shoulders.
“Do you know our building?”
“Yes. 337 East 56th Street.”
“Right. How many floors?”
“We are on the fourth, and there is one more up and then another to the roof.”
“Six stories high, and made of all bricks, right?”
“All bricks.”
“How many bricks do you think?”
“Maybe a hundred?”
Mommy laughs out loud.
“No, Dennis,” she says. “There are thousands and thousands. And if you think of each brick representing maybe fifty books, then that’s how many books are in the library. And do you know how many books you’ve read?”
“How many?”
“Maybe two bricks’ worth,” Mommy says, holding two fingers up. “So think about how exciting it is when you look at all the bricks in our building, that you have so many more books to read, and to have all that fun still before you.”
“Yeah, and who is going to carry all those bricks home from the library, huh?”
She is bending over now in her laughter, a high giggle kind of laugh. She smiles a lot, but she hardly ever laughs, and to see her laughing makes me feel happier, too.
Mommy stops laughing and gets on her hands and knees. She looks around and begins to crawl across the floor, pulling a big bucket of steaming water next to her. She has a rag in one hand and a brush in the other.
I don’t even like to carry groceries up the four flights of stairs, I am thinking as I watch her, never mind all these bricks she is talking about.
She is now crawling backward, the brush going back and forth like an out-of-control clock. Every once in a while she stops and wipes the sweat off her forehead with the rag.
It would be good if I could have just one book that was new, where the corners weren’t tattered, and I don’t have to worry about all those bricks up the four flights.
Suddenly, watching Mommy, I begin to think that I am just talking about myself, and it’s so selfish to just think about what I want, new books or anything else. My mind goes weird, like it is on fire inside my head as I begin to think about her, watching her here on her hands and knees in Mrs. Grayson’s kitchen. I don’t know another kid whose mother does this anywhere, except in their own houses, and I am getting awfully sad awfully quick. And mad. I am mad about all this. Why is my mother the only mother I know who gets down on her hands and knees for all these people? This is not our house, this is not our floor she is cleaning.
No. We are in Mrs. Grayson’s house on Sutton Place. And why can’t we live here? I mean, why can’t Mommy be like Mrs. Grayson? I know she has no choice, but why can’t it happen, anyway? My mind is racing around in circles. I am thinking all this even though Mommy says you should never wish you were somebody else. But I am getting madder and madder as I continue to think about it. Why couldn’t Mommy be Mrs. Grayson, instead of the other way around?
And then maybe I could have a new book, and we could sit and read it together, even for just a day.
Chapter Ten
It is Tuesday afternoon. I know it is Tuesday because there is altar boy practice every Tuesday, and Sister Stella let us out of class fifteen minutes early.
I’m on the altar holding a tall candlestick high up, as if I’m offering it up to God. It’s not so easy to do this when you’re only eight. It is made of gold, and it’s heavy, and I am afraid of dropping it. I know that there are people in the church making visits, and Father O’Rourke is behind me giving us instructions on how to be good acolytes. I should be paying more attention, but there are big holes in my shoes. I had cardboard in them, but it rained and the cardboard went like soggy liverwurst. I forgot to put in new cardboard, and so there are holes in my socks, too, and I can picture the threads falling out of the holes and all the people in the church laughing, and Father O’Rourke, too. I know that I want to throw the back of my cassock over my shoes, but I can’t hold up the candlestick with just one hand, and I pray to God to make Father O’Rourke get it over with. I don’t even have the Latin memorized yet, and here he is giving us the instruction to serve at High Mass.
“Okay,” Father says, “we are at the Consecration now, and the priest has the Host high in the air, so you’re on, Delaney.”
Richard Delaney is in charge of the bells, brass bells that look like three round upside-down bowls, and he hammers each bell so that it sounds like NBC on the radio. Delaney is a good bell ringer, and the sound goes around the church. It makes me think of the radio, NBC, sold American, look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp, the Shadow knows, Bobby Benson and the B bar B, Henry, Henry Aldrich, coming, mother, and I am thinking of these things to get my mind off the holes in my shoes, and to forget how my arms are hurting from holding this thing so high. And then my eyes tighten, and I make the faces, and I’m glad Mommy isn’t here to see me.
Father Hamilton comes on the altar and the first thing you notice about him is his white socks. The boys in school can’t wear white socks unless we have a note from home saying we have foot scurvy or the creeping crud or something. I wonder if Father has athlete’s foot? He is a lot younger than Father O’Rourke, but he is completely bald, and has skin the color of Chinese apples, a sort of red and brown mixed together. He works with Father O’Rourke, and he grills us all the time. And if he’s not asking us about the Latin, he wants to get the inside stuff about everybody’s family.
We are all standing here, lined up like penguins.
“How is your mother, Dennis?” Father Hamilton asks me.
“Fine, Father,” I answer, and wait for him to ask something more. He is always asking us where we went last weekend if we weren’t at Mass, or where did you get that new coat, or is your grandfather still living out in Brooklyn? He once asked me if my mother was working, and I told him my mother is always working, and he asked if she had a real job, and I told him she goes from one job to another.
He turns away from me now.
“How is your father, Peter?” he asks Petey Poscullo.
“Fine, Father.”
“Did he get a new job yet?”
“I don’t know, Father.”
“You don’t know?”
“He don’t talk to me about that.”
“Doesn’t, not don’t,” Father says. “And you, Timmy. Is your sister still living on the farm upstate?”
“Yes, Father,” Timmy Thompson answers.
I didn’t even know that Thompson had a sister, but I guess when sisters go to farms upstate, they are in prison or something like that.
“Okay,” Father Hamilton says to the whole group, “I am going to teach you how to pronounce the Latin of the Suscipiat.”
Father Hamilton recites the Suscipiat slowly. It is the hardest prayer for any altar boy to memorize, and we all listen carefully because Latin doesn’t always sound the same way it looks on a page.
“There are two words here,” Father says, “that you have to pr
actice, and if you don’t get them right, you will never get on the bus for Coney Island.”
Father knows that will get our attention because the only real reason we become altar boys is to get that extra day off from school and go on that trip to Coney Island every May.
“The words are sacrificium and totiusque, okay, and you will repeat them now as I say. Sa-cra-fee-see-umm, okay.”
Someone is heard to say sa-cra-fish-ium, and Father makes us say the word ten times before we can get on to totiusque.
“Toe-tea-us-quay, okay,” Father continues.
Someone says toe-ta-as-quay, and we have to do that word twenty times.
When Father Hamilton is finished, he looks over at me and sees that I have put my hands, cassock and all, into my back pockets, and he yells.
“Stand up straight, Smith,” Father barks, “and put your hands at your side.”
I jump as he yells. At first I am a little frightened, and then I get angry that he singled me out this way, embarrassing me. You would think that I was walking off with the tabernacle itself, the way he yelled. But I just stand straight and say nothing.
Father Hamilton goes on some more about the different Latin words, but I am not listening anymore. I am just standing with my hands at my side. I feel like telling Father Ford about him. Father Ford is the nicest priest I know, and he is the boss next to Monsignor O’Connor. He would tell Father Hamilton to let a kid put his hands in his back pockets if that’s where he wants them.
Finally, it is over, and Father O’Rourke says we can go home. The next time, he says, we will get to the mea culpa, and we should read in our missals about the Offertory.
I love being in this church. It’s such a big place, and the lighting is always perfect here, little candles throwing these big shadows that change whenever anyone walks around. I am always studying these gigantic paintings on the ceilings, and the ones on the walls that seem to move in the light, with the gold around the halos that flashes like it is part of a huge neon sign. And what I like, too, is that there is only one reason to be here, to be in this light and the quiet, and that is to talk more directly to God. I mean, you can talk to God anywhere—in your bathtub, at second base, anywhere—but it is better here somehow. And, here, you can see how many of the statues you can make smile. I think it’s an honor, too, being an altar boy, because it makes you different from all the other boys in class, even if you didn’t get an extra day off and got to get on the bus for the annual outing to Steeplechase Park in Coney Island.