by Dennis Smith
Uncle Tracy really is a riot, I am thinking as I begin down the hall to my Aunt Kitty’s to return the keys.
Aunt Kitty has the door open, and I can hear her jabbering a mile away. They are sitting in her living room, which on the first floor is smaller than ours because of the big lobby space in the front of the building, and I hear what they are saying as I go in the door and into the kitchen.
“It’s rotten what they do to him,” Aunt Kitty says. “They are always beating him up and taking his smokes, and he never has a drink.”
Who is she talking about? I am wondering as I lay the keys down on the table. I stand by the kitchen door and wait.
“He tried to run away once,” Aunt Kitty goes on, “during the time they were giving him the shock treatment, and they beat him up good. They said he fell in the shower. What a mess he was.”
“Holy shit,” Uncle Tracy says. “Where is this place?”
“Someplace called Greenland State Hospital,” Aunt Kittty answers.
I know that Greenland State is the insane asylum. The nuthouse. I’ve heard guys in the street sometimes say that other guys in the street should be sent away to Greenland State, like Charlie Ameche, who beat his father up so bad they had to keep the old man in the hospital for months before the broken bones in his face healed, and I am still wondering who Aunt Kitty is talking about, and how come she never told me anything like this.
“He’ll never get any better,” she says, “and I always feel sorry for poor Mary and the burden she has with those two sons.”
What burden? Is this my mother she is talking about? It can’t be Mom, because Mom is always saying how lucky she is to have such two healthy sons around the house.
“And the welfare,” Aunt Kitty says. “She’s gotta have the welfare. What a mess. At least I have the pension, and I don’t have to go on the welfare. But she’s lucky, anyway, that she got that apartment upstairs.”
My mind is now racing. Is there somebody upstairs who is on the welfare and has two kids and is named Mary, and who isn’t my mother?
I am running up the stairs now, two by two, and I feel the tears running as quickly down the sides of my face. I’m twelve years old and I shouldn’t be crying, but I want to yell at her, to tell her how mad I am that she has told me all these years about my father having the bad legs, and that the hospital won’t let me and Billy in because we are too young, that something fell off the truck at Railway Express and landed right on top of him and on top of his legs, and all these years I have pictured him being squished underneath some great package and his face tormented by the pain, and I always thought he was getting well, and he would come home and meet me after school and take me home, and someday take me to the ball game at Yankee Stadium.
But it is all a lie.
Why didn’t she tell me?
The O’Dwyer for Mayor sticker is still on the window on the fourth floor, and I stop there to catch my breath, stretching my eyes as wide as they will go, thinking of the words I will say to her.
I know, every time I think of something, that I won’t say that. I can’t. I can’t yell at my mother. I can’t make her sad. I am already a burden, Aunt Kitty said. And Billy, too. She has to carry us everywhere, like big things that wear her down. I can’t make her sad.
And it is my fault. How could I believe that he was in a hospital with bad legs? All these years, no one said anything, not Billy, either. Maybe Billy wanted to believe it, too, maybe Billy just said to himself that his father is in the hospital with bad legs, or bad something, but not because he was flipped, not because he was walking around with wide eyes and a blank, scary stare, or pacing back and forth like a palace guard, or beating himself against a wall, or lying in a corner of a padded cell with a straitjacket on.
But who knows what Billy is thinking, or my mother, or anyone else? We don’t talk about these things, we keep them packed away in a dark closet like a pair of old gloves that will never fit again.
I am thinking of all I have learned today, as I now lie with my eyes closed on the top bunk. Billy is below me, and I want to tell him everything, that I saw Uncle Tracy make forty dollars out of twenty-one dollars, and that Davy Weld taught me how to drive the car, and that Daddy was in Greenland State. Just like that, pop, pop, pop. But I don’t know if Billy knows. And if he does know, why hasn’t he told me all this time?
Jesus, I am twelve years old. I should have known.
My mother should have told me.
Why doesn’t she trust me?
Chapter Twenty-nine
It is one of those mornings when my mother is making us do things we don’t want to do, and I want to go out and play baseball under the bridge on 59th Street. It is Saturday, and the living room is bright with sunshine. We are on the west wall of the courtyard, and so when the sun goes over the East River, it brightens our living room for half the morning. After that, the apartment goes dark.
The welfare inspector is coming today. He always comes on Saturday, I guess so that he can talk to Billy and me, and Mom makes us put on our best shirts. Mine is the white shirt I wore at Confirmation. My hair is combed, and Mom has made me shine my shoes with the liquid polish she bought at Woolworth’s.
Mom has piled the magazines and books neatly on the table next to the couch, and on top of the pile is the Family Bible she bought recently for one dollar a month for thirty-six months. It is a beautiful book, filled with color pictures of saints and angels, and God, and on the first page is all our names written in big printed letters. It is the first new book that has ever been in our house, and every time I read in it I remember that I still have a ton of those book-bricks in my building to read.
The radio is blaring the Top Ten, Martin Block and his Make Believe Ballroom. Billy is in a plaid shirt, a little heavy for this weather, and is sitting on the windowsill of the living room, washing the windows. His shoes are shined with the liquid polish, and are gleaming. He puts vinegar in the spaghetti pot and fills it with cold water. That is the best for the windows, Mom says. He wipes the rag from one end of the window to the other and then dries it with old newspaper. His hand is black with the ink, but the windows sparkle. He is singing as he wipes, “That Old Black Magic,” and he sounds like a crooner.
I have put an old army blanket over the television that Uncle Andy just gave us, for the welfare doesn’t allow television sets. It is great to have a television set, and not to have to go to Dante Vescovi’s house to watch Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.
My mother takes a look around the living room and says that the phonograph has to be covered, too, for the welfare also doesn’t like phonographs as much as they don’t like television sets. I look for another army blanket on the top of the tin closet my mother has bought for her room. But I don’t see one, and so I take the bedspread off her bed and lay it across the phonograph. The bedspread is light green and the army blanket is dark brown, and it looks like there are two pedestals in the living room waiting for us to put stuff on top of them like in Bloomingdale’s. I am thinking that we could put picture frames on them, or maybe the spaghetti bowl, which is painted with flowers.
My mother comes into the living room and takes a look. She shakes her head.
“It will never do,” she says.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Just the colors,” she says, “green and brown. That will never do. Look for something yellow or blue, a sheet maybe, something so that the colors go together.”
She rubs my head like I am a little boy. I hate it when she does this, but I never turn away or say anything.
“They can come all they want,” she says, “just because we’re on home relief, but I don’t want them to say that we don’t have any taste.”
Mom sits on the couch and looks around the room. It looks okay to her, I can tell, for she is smiling.
“It won’t be long,” she says, “before we are off this welfare, and I’ll be glad when that day comes. You guys are big enough to be on your own n
ow—pretty soon, anyway.”
I know she is talking about me, because Billy is fourteen, and he told my mother recently that the famous Romeo of Romeo and Juliet was already in love and dead at his age.
“And,” she continues, “I am going to try to get a job at the telephone company. At the telephone company, they won’t care if we have a television or not.”
“And then,” Billy asks, “maybe we could get a telephone?”
“Maybe,” she says.
An old colored man comes to the door, carrying a large notebook that has paper hanging out from all sides. He has a small mustache, and it looks like he cares about it a lot, for it is very straight and trimmed. He smiles, and my mother asks him in.
He sits at the kitchen table. It is a new table made of something called Formica, and it has chromium legs. Mom loves this table, I guess because it is new. She loves anything that shines and sparkles. There are four chairs with stuffed plastic seats and chromium legs, and Mom has washed all the fingerprints off the chromium.
We don’t get many new things in the house. All the furniture, the chairs, the lamps, the dishes, came from people who gave it to us. Especially Uncle Andy, who gives us all his old things when he gets new ones.
We can see the colored man studying the pedestals like they were works of art. I don’t think he would ask to go into the living room if he is not invited. Mom would tell him that it is impolite to invite yourself wherever you please.
The colored man asks me and Billy to sit down, and we do.
“What did you have for your supper last night?” he asks.
“Magpie and Muff,” Billy says, fooling around. Mom shoves his shoulder.
Tripe,” I say.
Now she shoves my shoulder.
“We did not have tripe,” she says. “Why do you say tripe?”
“I hate tripe, Mom,” I say.
“We haven’t had any tripe in a year,” she says.
“I just wanted to remind you,” I say.
The colored man doesn’t think this is funny, and to get our attention he slaps his hand down easily on the new table.
“Well,” he asks, “what did you have?”
“Hamburgers,” my mother says.
“And mashed potatoes,” Billy says.
“I’m not so good on hamburgers, either,” I say.
“Did you bring us any turkey?” Billy asks. I guess Billy is thinking of the turkeys that the James Farley Democratic Club gives out at Christmas.
No answer. Instead, the man asks, “How many days of school did you miss in the last month?”
“I guess you don’t know Sister Sylvester,” I say. “You don’t miss school in St. John’s. They come to your house to yell at you.”
He looks at Billy.
“Same thing at Cardinal Hayes High School. I never miss.”
“Okay,” the man says, “that’s all I have to ask.”
I think all his job consists of is making sure people are who they say they are, and that if you say you have two kids, that you really have two kids. My mother calls them “checker-uppers” when they come.
“So I’m going out, Mom,” I say.
“Where are you going?”
“Just out,” I say.
“I’m going to Kips,” Billy says.
The colored man is still sitting there, writing in his notebook.
I change my clothes and grab my baseball glove from the top of the tub. It is the old one that was given to me by Uncle Phil a few years before he died.
“I guess,” I say, “I’ll play ball under the bridge with the PAL team.”
I kiss my mother goodbye, and I would say goodbye to the colored man if he would only look up from his writing. But he doesn’t.
On the stoop, I linger for a moment. Billy is standing next to me.
“Who are you playing with?” Billy asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, “the Police Athletic League team up on 59th Street, I guess.”
I am biding my time, for I don’t want to walk with my brother. I am always a straight shooter with Billy, but I don’t want him to know that I started smoking just after I learned how to drive, and I have a package of cigarettes hidden under the stairs in the hall. He is always straight with me, too, except for not telling me about my father. But, still, I don’t want him to be mad at me for smoking.
“I think,” I say, “I’ll just wait here for a few minutes and see if anybody comes around.”
“See ya.”
“Yeah,” I say.
I watch Billy until he turns the corner at First Avenue, and then I take the smokes from under the stairs. They are burning a hole in my pocket, but I don’t light one up until I get far down toward Sutton Place. Finally, I take one out and hold the book of matches with one hand. The way Davy Weld did it. I’ve been practicing this for a few weeks now, and I want to get it right. I fold one match over and close the cover, and still with just one hand, I bend the match again until it hits the striker, and then I zip my finger across, and the match lights.
I am proud of this new trick, and I wish someone would have seen me do it. But the street is empty until I turn the corner on York Avenue and walk toward the baseball field at 59th Street. There I see Jimmy Burton, sitting against the rough concrete of the sitting steps that go around the ballpark. The park is empty except for a couple of boys playing catch near home plate. They are waiting for the head of the PAL team to come with the bats and the bases.
“Hey,” I call out to him, “where’s your glove?”
“I don’t need a glove,” he says. “I have a car.”
Burton is fourteen, a big guy with curly hair, and he looks old enough so that he can buy smokes in a store without anyone asking his age.
“Where did you get a car?” I ask, thinking that my Uncle Tracy may be in town again.
“Right here in my shirt pocket,” he answers.
He is wearing a red and black plaid shirt and pulls a chewing-gum wrapper from the pocket. The wrinkles have been smoothed out so that it is a shiny sheet of silver, like silk. I know exactly what he is talking about.
“So where’s this car?” I ask.
“Down by the smokestack,” he says, talking about the big Con Edison smokestack on 59th Street by the river. “I was hitting the windows and the best ‘49 Ford opened up.”
I picture him pressing every side and vent window of every car until he finds one open.
“Did you get it started?” I ask.
“I didn’t try yet,” he says. “You wanna come?”
“No,” I say. “What if you get caught?”
“Don’t be such a chicken ass,” he says. “You don’t even know how to drive. You don’t get caught if you just drive around and obey all the rules like stopping at the lights.”
“I do know how to drive,” I say. “I can drive as good as anyone.”
I don’t like it when people tell me that I can’t do something when I know I can.
“C’mon,” Burton says, getting up and pulling me by the sleeve.”C’mon.”
Burton is one of those guys in the neighborhood that are liked by everybody, mostly because he is a little crazy, but also because he is loyal. Even if you are wrong, like, say, you cursed in front of somebody’s girlfriend, Burton will always back you up if you need him, for he is good with his dukes, or he will give you a quarter for the movies if you don’t have one. He took me to the movies a few times, and I guess this is why I don’t want to disappoint him now.
And so I walk down toward the river with him, knowing that I am getting into something that could end up with me holding the shitty end of the stick. Joyriding in a stolen car is not something any of the guys I know have ever done. Walsh and Scarry and those guys wouldn’t have the balls to put it together that you could act the part in a ‘49 Ford, you could put your arm out the window, and the girls on the corner could give you a look that could work when you passed them by.
This ‘49 Ford is a beauty, gleaming dark
blue paint, woven black and white plastic seats, a big black steering wheel. It has a smell of mint in the car, coming from one of those odor things that is hanging from one of the radio knobs. Burton shoves the silver paper up underneath the dashboard behind the ignition key mount. There is a spark, and he flinches backward, dropping the paper.
Maybe this is a sign, I think. Maybe he won’t get it started, and we can get out of this car before somebody comes. But he picks it up and tries again, this time starting the car.
“Go, baby, go,” Burton says, and he rams the car in first gear and pops the clutch. The wheels squeal, and the car lunges forward, just missing a parked car in front. Burton forgets to put the clutch in again as he brakes at the red light, and the car stalls.
“Shit,” he says, shoving the paper underneath again. But the car won’t start. He tries and tries, but the contact with the silver just does not happen.
“The paper must be all scratched up,” he says. “I don’t have any more gum. Do you have any gum?”
Suddenly, a car comes up behind us and beeps his horn.
“Christ,” I say. This could be an off-duty cop, or someone who knows this car and the car’s owner. I can feel my eyes tighten at the corners.
We are sitting at a red light on 59th Street and York Avenue, and I know I don’t have any gum. The car is stolen, and all I can think of is that my mother never lets me chew gum because it is bad for the teeth, and my teeth are bad enough ever since the dental students pulled out the ones with the cavities. And now there is this car behind us beeping his horn like he is an ambulance driver delivering a stretcher.
Burton is looking all around, and I can tell he is wondering what to do.
I am suddenly scared, and my mouth begins to tremble. If this guy would only stop beeping his horn. Everybody up and down Sutton Place must be turning around to look. I can hardly speak, for if we got caught in a stolen car, it would be Lincoln Hall or some other reform school for sure, and all the boys I know who went to Lincoln Hall were practicing to be murderers. I don’t know if I could ever live in a place like that.