by Dennis Smith
As I raise the bottle to my lips I see out of the corner of my eye that Shalleski and his brother are coming toward us.
“Hey,” Bobby says to them.
“What are you guys doing?” Shalleski’s brother says. Harry is a tall and skinny boy, two years older than Shalleski and a little nicer.
“Off-the-point,” Bobby says.
“Give me some of that,” Shalleski says to me, reaching for the bottle.
“No,” I say.
I stare at him, but I know I am not going to stare him down.
“Give me that bottle,” Shalleski says, “or I’ll kick your ass in.”
“No,” I answer, “it’s mine.”
I can feel my body beginning to shake. I know this will lead to a fight. You just know these things, the way you know the guy in the movie will rip your ticket in half when you give it to him. One action leads to another.
I am afraid, and I know that he can see I am afraid, but I remember what Billy said, too. It is hard to talk, I am so nervous. The skin around my eyes begins to tighten, and I make the face, but I know I am not going to let Shalleski get this bottle. There is only one thing for me to do, and I know I am going to get hurt doing it, but I know, too, that I have to be quick, quick like my brother. So I hand the bottle to Bobby. As soon as Bobby takes the bottle I have a free hand, and I feel myself squeezing my fingers hard into my palm so that my fist is as tight as it can be, like a piece of hard wood, and I swing it around as hard as I can and punch Shalleski across the side of his face. I guess I could have hit him in the mouth, but I didn’t really want to hurt him or knock his teeth out. I am hoping that a punch like this, an easy one, will keep him from getting too mad at me.
I just know I have to do this.
Shalleski begins to yell as he falls back.
“You fuck, you fuck,” he is screaming as he recovers, and lunges at me. He grabs me around the waist and pulls me to the ground and begins to punch wildly at me. I am on the ground, but I don’t punch him back. I don’t want to be in this fight, but I know I have to be here. I just try to cover my head and face so that his punches go off the side of my arm. He is strong, and I can feel the muscles in his body tighten as he grabs me around the neck.
I could fight back easily enough if I wanted to, but I just want him to know that he’ll have to fight me every time he gives me a bad time. I don’t care about winning or losing, but Shalleski has to know he is going to have to go after someone else the next time.
God, I am thinking as I take a good punch to my head, I have to take care of myself. So I begin to move around quickly, knowing that I don’t want to be like a statue. A statue is too good a good target. I feel myself getting out of his grip, and I know I could punch him right in his teeth if I wanted, but something is holding me back.
He has his arm around my neck, but I have one arm under his neck, and the other arm is free. I could bust him a good one now, if I wanted.
Then, suddenly, Shalleski is saying, “You give? You give?”
It is easy to stop it now, even though I have a free fist to bop him one. I just have to say “Give,” and it will be all over.
When someone says “Give,” you have to stop. That is the way it is on the east side. I could say it in a second, but I have to think what I want to do with my free fist. Should I crack him hard?
My heart is not in this fight. I know that.
I don’t like Shalleski, but I don’t want to hurt him, either.
I am here on the ground rolling around with Shalleski in my new dungarees, and I am still remembering what he did to me back there on First Avenue a few years ago. I so wanted to get even with him then, but now it doesn’t matter so much. It doesn’t matter that he sent all my candy flying across First Avenue.
And there have been plenty of other times, too, that Shalleski has acted like a pain and bullied me. Little things, like punching me hard in the middle of the back in the school yard basketball games. But, still, I don’t want to hurt him, even if I could kick the shit outta him. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
Passing through my mind now, but just for a second, is Sister Maureen in the second grade talking about turning the other cheek, and giving somebody your coat, too, if he asks you for your shirt. I remember that she also said it was easy to say this, but much harder to do, and I think now that I don’t want to give Shalleski anything. I don’t want to take anything from him, either. I just want us to be equal, if that could be in the cards.
Finally, after thinking about all this, I say the famous word. “Okay,” I say as he is choking me, “I give.”
But Shalleski starts to punch at me again. It figures that he wouldn’t be fair, and I should have known better.
And now Shalleski’s brother pulls him off.
“He says he gives,” Harry says, “so break it up.”
Shalleski gets up, and he and his brother move on up the street, and they don’t look back. I turn to Bobby, and he hands me back the bottle of soda. There is still a little left in the bottle, and I take it to the curb and pour it out.
“Hey,” Bobby yells out, “what the hell are you doing?”
“The soda doesn’t matter,” I say. “This is not why I punched him.”
“You coulda gave it to me.”
“It don’t matter,” I answer.
“Maybe you coulda beat him,” Bobby says.
I am laughing now, and I can’t wait to tell my brother Billy.
“Ahh, Bobby,” I say, “maybe and ten cents gets you on the subway.”
I guess you have to make one point at a time, I think.
Walking up First Avenue to 56th Street, I am scraping a stick along the block-long fence that goes around the church and school of St. John’s. It makes a clattering sound, like a drummer in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Suddenly, Walsh begins to laugh out loud. He is pointing at the knee of my dungarees.
“Hey, Dennis,” he says, “you got a hole in your pants.”
“Holy shit,” I say.
“Now,” Walsh says, “you got a hole in your pants, a hole in your shoes, and a hole in your head.”
God, I am thinking, my mother will kill me.
I should have hit that Shalleski when I had the chance.
Chapter Sixteen
Sister Urban is looking over the class with that funny look she has every time she wants to lash out at someone. Raymond Rabbitscabbage farted, just a little noise. But it gives me an idea, and I put my hand in my shirt, cup it under my arm, and squeeze down. I am good at this, and it makes a terrific fart noise. Petey Poscullo laughs out loud. Raymond Rabbitscabbage farts again, and this time Petey Poscullo can’t stop laughing. I know that Sister Urban is out for a farter, and Petey knows that she will settle for a laugher if she can’t find a farter. So Petey is now pointing at me, and Sister Urban is flying down the aisle. Her wide black habit knocks the books off of Gilda Galli’s desk, and she doesn’t stop to help pick them up for Gilda. She tears toward me, and I feel like running.
“It wasn’t me, Sister,” I cry out, “I swear.”
But that doesn’t stop her. She grabs me. She pulls me by the arm, and I can see her hand go way back before she swings it around and slaps me hard across the face as she pulls me from the seat. I am stunned that she does this, and I yell.
“Shit,” I say, “I didn’t do nothing that bad.”
She pushes me to the back of the room and has me standing with my nose one inch from the brown wall. She puts her mouth next to my ear and yells at me.
“If you ever curse in this room again,” she screams, “I will have you thrown out of this school as fast as you can blink.”
Raymond Rasakavitch is now as silent as a guardian angel, and Petey has stopped laughing. Ann Kovak, who is always so sweet and friendly, looks like she is going to cry. She is so shy anyway, and now her eyes look so sad, and her lips are pursed up. The rest of them, too, look scared and caring. I know that everyone in the c
lass is feeling sorry for me, and I will let them know that I would beat the crap out of Poscullo if he wasn’t two years older than me because he was left back twice. Poscullo’s going to have a mustache when he graduates.
Here, with my nose against the wall, I listen to everyone in the class talking again about Blessed Maria Goretti. You can’t get away from the saints in my school, and Blessed Maria comes up like clockwork every term. She fought her attacker off until she died, protecting herself from sin.
I think that she must have been a frightened little girl, but my nose is against the wall, and I can’t say anything. And so I close my eyes and think of Blessed Maria Goretti, and of the fight she must have put up to keep from committing a sin.
Suddenly, I am thinking of Mr. Dempsey, and what would have happened if I didn’t get away from him that afternoon in the delicatessen. I wonder if Mr. Dempsey would become a priest if he killed me.
I guess once something like that happens to you, you can never forget it, and I still think about why people like Mr. Dempsey don’t get arrested, or why God doesn’t find some way to stop them from hurting little kids. And how come God lets a nun cream a kid like this in front of everyone?
My face is burning, and I try to rub it a little to make the burning go away. But Sister Urban sees me and calls out from the front of the room.
“You just put your hands at your side,” she says, “or I’ll tie them behind your back.”
Whenever I go to church, I always ask God to help make everything better for everyone. I know that I’m ten years old, and it’s 1950, and I have a job, and I’m supposed to act older and nor care about God or church, because everybody now is getting a television set and watching it is the big thing. But I love talking to God because I know He cares about me. Just like my mother does. But I worry that He has too many people talking to Him at the same time, and doesn’t have time to get to me.
Chapter Seventeen
My mother holds my face in her hands.
“Look at this,” she says. “What happened?”
There is no mirror in our bathroom. The bathroom is just a little square not much bigger than the bowl itself. There isn’t even a light, because there is just room enough for your knees if you are sitting, and you can hold the door open a little to let some of the kitchen light in. So my mother pulls me in front of the mirror above the kitchen sink.
“Just look,” she says, pointing.
I can see Sister Urban’s handprint in red across the side of my face. Now I guess I have to tell her about what happened, but she hates it if I have been bad in school. Or anywhere. She can get the strap on me to add to the punishment if I did something bad. But, I am thinking, I didn’t do anything that bad. And so I sit down in a kitchen chair and tell her about Rabbitscabbage and Petey Poscullo, and even Gilda’s books, and Ann’s sad eyes, and how Sister Urban ran down the aisle.
“You just made a crack underneath your arm?”
“That’s all I did, and Petey …”
“It is kid stuff,” she whispers, “just kid stuff. Put your jacket on.”
Now I am in the dark corridor of the second floor of St. John the Evangelist school, and we are looking for Sister Urban. I don’t want to be here because no matter what happens I know that I am going to be a problem for Sister Urban for the rest of the school year.
I am hoping against hope that Sister Urban is not to be found, but there she is, sitting at her desk reading papers. I never have the luck.
“You wait here,” my mother says.
I don’t think I have ever seen her this mad.
The door is wide open, and I listen to what my mother has to say. She doesn’t give Sister Urban a moment to say anything back, and she is talking like a Gatling gun.
“I just want to tell you,” she says, “that my son has a red mark across his face the exact size of your hand, and I don’t give a fiddler’s anything what he has done, you are never to touch him again, and you can come to see me and I will do all the punishing, but if you ever put your hand on my child again, I swear on all that is holy and good that I will come across the street to this school, and I will find you, and before everybody I will tear the hood off your head and put a match to it.”
Sister Urban is as stunned as I was when she whacked me, and in less than a second my mother has me by the hand, and we are walking out of the school, across the street, and back up the stoop on 56th Street.
“She is going to hate me, Mom,” I say as we walk up the gum-stained marble steps of the hallway.
“She’ll do no such thing,” my mother says. “She’ll respect you.”
I guess my mother is right. I know she wouldn’t do anything to get me in trouble. But I’m glad about one thing, anyway: that there were no kids in the class when my mother got there.
Chapter Eighteen
My mother has been seeing this guy named Tommy Quigley. Billy says that Quigley is a queer name, and not a name to make you like someone. But she goes out with this Quigley sometimes, probably too much if you ask me. Quigley comes over and has dinner with us at the kitchen table. My mother makes fish sticks or something good like that when he comes.
“He is just a friend,” she said one day when Billy asked her why he comes around.
I think of Daddy every time I see this Quigley guy, but Billy says that I shouldn’t worry about it, that she has to have friends. She only has Aunt Kitty and Aunt Helen to make her laugh.
Sometimes I feel so sorry for my mother. She doesn’t have time to make a lot of friends because she is always running from one apartment to the other trying to get together more money than the welfare will give her, just so she can buy things for the house and for me and Billy.
“Don’t tell anyone that he comes here,” she told me and Billy.
She always wants to keep everything a secret. I guess she feels bad that this guy comes here when she already has a husband up in the hospital. I don’t even know how she met him, and she wouldn’t tell me, anyway. She never talks much about herself, except when she tells us how hard it was for her mother and father when they came here from Ireland. I don’t even know the name of the high school she went to, or if she had a best friend, or what her first job was. And if I ask her things, she usually says, “Oh, it’s not important” or “We just got by.”
One day, though, I got her talking, and she told me about growing up beside a firehouse in Brooklyn, and that she loved the firemen who would send her to the store for sandwiches when she was a little girl because they couldn’t leave the firehouse, and then they always gave her a big tip. That’s as much as I know about the way she grew up.
Billy told me he thinks her big secrets come from her being poor when she was little, that she didn’t want to think about it anymore. I don’t know what it’s like to be poor like that, but I remember her saying that you are only poor if you miss a meal when you want one. And I remember, too, when she told Pop that it was easier to be poor when you have steam heat. I don’t know what it could have been like for her.
Quigley works in a delicatessen somewhere, and I don’t like people who work in delicatessens, ever since Mr. Dempsey. I don’t even go into delicatessens anymore. I wouldn’t go into a delicatessen if they were giving away potato chips for free.
My mother went out with Quigley tonight, but she came home earlier than she said she would. She said she’d be home at nine-thirty, but she came back at eight. Billy was still listening to the radio in the living room, and I was on a kitchen chair reading about Heidi. I don’t know why my mother gets me these books about people in other countries. I’m in the sixth grade now, and should be reading mystery stories like Scarry does.
She didn’t say anything much when she came in. She just put her robe on and read a magazine, the way she does most nights.
Now it is the middle of the night. I have just eased out of my sleep. I didn’t put my pajamas on when I went to bed tonight. I don’t know why. I was lying on the top bunk, thinking about putting my pa
jamas on, but Billy came in and turned off the light.
And when the light went out, I stopped thinking about anything but Marilyn Rolleri. I fell asleep thinking about her, and now I am awake again thinking about her. It is funny about being in the dark, for when the lights are out, I can be completely alone, just alone to think about my life. In the dark you can make things happen, things you never speak of. I can take Marilyn Rolleri and walk with her anywhere, say anything to her, do anything. A separate world can begin when the lights go out, and I put myself into Marilyn Rolleri’s life, and now in the darkness of my room I am sitting with Marilyn Rolleri on a park bench down by the Pepsi-Cola sign.
I don’t know what it is I like about Marilyn Rolleri because she hardly ever says hello to me. Still, she doesn’t have skinny legs anymore, and she has the biggest breasts in the class. I am wishing that I sat across from her like I did in the third and fourth grades, so I could watch her breasts moving up and down as she breathes. Maybe I could watch them grow, too, a little more each day.
Some of the guys in the class are always talking about getting boners, and I am wondering why I never can get one except when I am sleeping, even now when I am thinking about Marilyn’s breasts, thinking about moving my hand into her blouse on the park bench, wondering what they look like naked, what size are the nipples, what color?
Jeez, when will I ever be old enough to have a boner?
I now begin to put my hand down inside my underwear, thinking that I can make it work, that I can have all that fun the guys talk about. I think about holding myself, but I suddenly stop. I can feel my face glowing red in the darkness because I know that I shouldn’t be doing this. Boys shouldn’t do this at eleven years old, or even at sixteen. It’s a sin, I know that, and that I can go to hell if I get hit by a car tomorrow.