Phantom Effect

by Michael Aronovitz

  She lets go of my hand.

  “Go ahead, Johnny. Look in the bag.”

  I don’t move.

  “Go on.”

  She gives a little push between my shoulders, and I feel my feet sliding along the bumpy linoleum like they ain’t my own. I get up next to it and it smells like mold and I have to reach to hook my hands over because it’s a bit taller than me and I need to get up on my tiptoes. I pull up nice and slow because I’m scared and because I don’t want to use all my weight and skid out the bottom.

  I clear the edge and strain my eyes downward. And when I see what’s waiting there at the bottom of the bag, all black and furry and reaching out its front legs to tickle the low corner-folds, I want to holler and run, but then like hard-pinching pliers Mama’s hands are under my armpits lifting me, and she’s saying that if I buck ’n’ kick she’s gonna find one bigger than my hand, and that I only have to spend five minutes in there and it’s more than fair ’cause it’s only a fraction of the time she’s gotta spend remaking the jar of marmalade that I stole from right under her nose.

  And now I’m grown again and I’m not in the kitchen or the low pantry or the crawlspace the Motel 6 bartenders used to bring their kegs through. I’m in a laundry bag in the dark at the bottom of one of those roll carts they mount on the tracks under the steel chutes, and I can feel it inching back and forth along the rails as I struggle in here. When I was six my Mama put me in the basement hamper with a black tarantula, and I’ve been made to remember the drawstring being pulled closed across the top of my scalp in a shrinking circle, a bathing cap, a doo-rag, yeah, now I get the clumsy connection with the older boy behind the countertop, the elder version of the six-year-old who manned up and learned to wear his nightmares instead of letting them break him. I also realize that Mama’s punishment made it so I ain’t afraid to creep through the sewers or hide up in the ductwork nowadays, but that don’t mean that I ever got to like spiders.

  There must be twenty or thirty of them in here, all big as footballs, swarming, making hissing sounds, and covering me over like smoke and shadow.

  I remember my bonesaw knuckle and use it to puncture the canvas. There’s a “pop” and the sound of stale air escaping, and I dig two fingers in the hole and start ripping. Next thing I know I’ve tipped the cart off the track and when we hit I roll with it kicking and shredding and then I’m standing there giving myself a hard rubdown, the spiders dropping off and skittering into the blackness.

  Their nails make sounds on the concrete like frying bacon, or rain on the window, or . . .

  Love beads sliding off the string of a broken necklace, dancing and pinging along the hard Traxtile floor-section.

  My right foot is asleep and I can’t shake it out, can’t go up one-legged and wiggle my toes, can’t even take a baby-step in this cramped basement closet because it was the last make-up session for school pictures today marking the end of seventh grade and Mama made me wear the shoes with the clicky heels that haven’t really fit for six months. There’s the smell of stale cigars and cheap aftershave in here, and I’m hoping my eyes don’t water and my nose don’t start running. Mr. Nurve rents us the upstairs and Mama copied his key on the sly for emergencies, ’cause the fuse box is down here and we keep some of our stuff in storage in the white veneer cabinets by the pipe cubby and French drain in the back corner. Mr. Nurve owns a couple of the row houses here on Sunshine Road, and Mama calls him a “slum lord” ’cause these ramshackle rat-traps ain’t fit for the niggers let alone the Indians who work in the Swell Bubble Gum factory or the ball-bearing manufacturer up in North Philly. She also calls him “Nurve the Purve,” since she seen him hanging out at the high school in the parking lot by the dirt ball field, sitting up on the hood of the black sedan she calls his “mid-life crisis” and talking to the senior girls from the Vo-Tech beauty school, offering them cigarettes and looking at them with those “sideward eyes” after dropping off the cosmetics he sells to their teachers through his Amway account at “special bargain pricing the district can’t ignore.”

  Earlier this week Mama was standing at the stove after a shift, still wearing the Harley Davidson bandana and the light brown jumpsuit that accordioned at her waist and wrists so that nothing got snagged when she fed the raw stock into the bending machine to make the fins for the transformer oil boxes out at the metal plant on Ridge Avenue. She had a hand on her hip and she was stirring up a pot of chili real hard like she was pissed, vapors threading around her head like bad dreams.

  “He’s lecherous,” she was saying, “luring them into that dusty little hump-den down there. I seen him, parking in the back alley the other week with some ash-blond in a tanktop sliding out of the passenger seat, high heels, pants painted on her.” She paused to turn on the hood fan. “He was probably ramming it in her before she had a chance to get her drawers down to her ankles, and now his latest project is that skinny one . . . spiky black hair, belly ring, black slinky boots.”

  “Julianna Conigliaro,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Julianna Conigliaro!”

  Mama turned profile for a second, I could feel it as I stared at the table in front of me. I could sense her measuring whether I was talking back, being smart, or raising my voice over the rattle and hum of the stove blower that didn’t do much of anything anyway.

  “Right,” she said slowly, “Julianna Conigliaro. I remember her from back when she was in sixth grade at the alternative school, her and that weird girl with the Jew-fro and the wandering eye, both of them filling their book bags with the shavings from all the electric pencil sharpeners and dumping the stuff in the toilets, making them clog. Made it hell for me and the other three temps, having to answer to the head custodian like we was kids.” She reached for the red pepper and shook it hard into the pot. “So I’m coming home today and I can’t get parking out front because Trudy’s oldest is out of lock-up and the whole clan’s come out of the woodwork, barbecuing on the front porch, spilling out onto the sidewalk. I finally find a spot way up on Maple and while I’m passing the back alley, I see Julianna Conigliaro opening up the basement door for the both of them. Only Nurve the Purve ain’t got no case of beer or nothing, like as if he threw her the keys to get everything open while he hauled out the booze, balancing it on his knee to shut the trunk and re-find the carry holes. Oh no, she’s got her own set, like the two of them are a regular item, like a couple, and they’re giggling about the whole thing, calling each other ‘cannibals,’ as if it ain’t obvious what that stands for, and even though she might be willing, eighteen, and legal by now, she’s still a teenager for Christ’s sake, about to be lying there bare-ass naked with her knees pointed up at the ceiling.”

  I kept my eyes humble, staring down at the renegade Honey Nut Cheerios that were left sticking to the sides of the cereal bowl, and while I was thankful for the snack Mama always let me have before dinner when I was good (and a bit disgusted by the fact that I had to always cap it off by drinking the milk at the bottom and not wasting anything), it wasn’t lukewarm sugared-up milk, humbled eyes, inconvenient parking spots, or rattling stove fans at the front of my mind at the moment.

  It was Julianna Conigliaro, lying bare-ass naked with her knees pointed up at the ceiling. She was one of those older girls we knew about because her little brother played quarterback for the middle school football team and she went to all his games, backing in her dad’s black pickup to the edge of that little hill you could get to overlooking the 30-yard line on the visitor’s side, always whooping and carrying on alongside three or four of her girlfriends in the back bed with the hatch pulled down and the radio blasting.

  They sure enough weren’t gonna win any talent shows, but when they put their hands over their heads, moving their hips to the music like pythons in the mist, the cheerleaders looked more pissed than the opposing coaches. And Julianna herself wasn’t about to win any beauty pageants talking about world peace and feeding the homeless or anything, but ther
e was something about that wide mouth, those big teeth, and the beauty mark on the side of her chin that drove you a bit crazy, making you think that she was always pouting and ready to roll her eyes as if she was dying for you to go ahead and try to teach her a lesson or something. She had long neck and wore her jeans low, rose tattoo snaking up along the back of her left hip kind of butch, but if you were lucky enough to see her in the mall or making her way down an aisle at the ShopRite she had this real girly walk to her, swinging an arm with her hand cocked and knuckles up, clicking her heels, chewing her gum. Last summer she was all about tight jeans and heels, and this year she was into those shorts and black boots Mama was talking about, but I really wished she hadn’t brought her up in the first place because at thirteen and a half I thought about sex all the time to begin with, and you weren’t supposed to go around getting wood at the dinner table, especially when you were sort of getting a lecture.

  Too late.

  Even though Mama had already switched subjects, chopping up a purple onion and talking about the asshole shop steward who was basically telling everyone that it was time to tuck into their turtle shells because of the war and the recession, I was still stuck on Julianna Conigliaro and her long, toned, girly legs.

  See, I was obsessed with Julianna Conigliaro, same as I was with Brianna Wackowitz, Mandy Fuller, Stephanie Triollo, and Rachel Witkoski, but the only difference was that Julianna Conigliaro was in high school, and last year when I happened to see her at the doctor’s office, she put on a show I wasn’t going to forget anytime soon.

  I had bitten one of my thumbnails down to the quick, infecting it, and since I had been slow getting ready finding a “presentable shirt” we were five minutes late for the appointment, so Mama had to go out to move the car to a legal parking space after checking me in. It was flu season, and the waiting room was packed, mostly with little kids, a couple of them in diapers, the older ones playing at the roller-coaster bead-toy table squawking at their new play friends in the plastic mini-castle taking turns going down the bumpy slide. I sat across from Julianna Conigliaro and didn’t even recognize her at first, because her hair was flattened on top, no fake eyelashes, and her nose was reddened up something fierce. She had on a black sleeveless T-shirt, a blue jean skirt with white frays at the edges, and faded pink Keds. Her knees were drawn up with her arms hugging them, feet on the chair, and she was leaning to the side, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder, one of those big round fat ladies with a teeny-tiny black purse as if she was trying to be funny but you knew that she wasn’t. Suddenly, she kissed her daughter’s forehead and stood to go to tell the receptionist something or other, and as Julianna Conigliaro was straightening back up she caught me staring.

  At her ankles.

  Because they were the only things blocking a clear view up her skirt.

  I felt her looking and I jerked up my glance, face burning. She widened her eyes at me, then looked off in disgust, lower lip hanging. Slowly she turned back as if she still “couldn’t believe this” and she made an expression like, “What!?” I shrugged, a weak smile scribbled across my face, and then her expression iced down to, “Oh, so that’s how it is, huh?” She lifted her chin as if she was challenging me to a game of tetherball or something, and then there was movement, sneaker soles rubbing along hard plastic. My glance fell.

  Julianna Conigliaro was still holding her knees together but she was spreading apart her feet, and I saw a flash of the vertical band of her underwear, I saw the dark indentations where her thighs ended and the yellow cotton thinned down to a strip disappearing between the cheeks of her ass in a perfect double-sided fishing-hook shape, and then her feet were scraping back together blocking the view again.

  When I looked up this time, she closed the deal by jerking her head forward, like a tough girl, fake-me-out, “I’m gonna smack you.” The nurse called her and she got up to join her mother without so much as a word.

  It was the sexiest thing that ever happened to me.

  Well . . . maybe the second.

  See, I was sitting there at the dinner table with my soggy Cheerios, my rock-hard boner, and a key to the basement dangling on the nail in the flour and sugar cabinet where Mama had stowed it in case of emergencies.

  Oh, this was an emergency all right.

  The next day when she made me wear the gay dressy clothes she kept in her bedroom so I wouldn’t fuck up spilling Dr. Pepper on them or leaving them in a corner rumpled up with the dust mites, I didn’t complain. When I had to struggle to button the pants and the shoes were too tight I didn’t say a word, and when I stood at the sink and she licked her fingers, smoothing back the long lock of hair that always went renegade hanging over one eye, I didn’t cringe or whine or voice my preference for shoving the tie in my pocket until I’d really need it fifth period when they were going to run the five or six of us that missed the original picture assemblies down to the auditorium to sit there like happy idiots looking at the birdie and saying “cheese” just so we wouldn’t fuck up the yearbook with blank spots.

  I didn’t say one word.

  Because I was going to be punctual for every class, I was going to fold my hands, I was going to get my picture taken like a good little seventh grader on the last day of school, and then I was going to rush home and raid that flour and sugar cabinet.

  Open the forbidden basement door.

  Hide down there somewhere and watch Nurve the Purve fucking the shit out of Julianna Conigliaro bare-ass naked with those knees pointing up. Because “cannibal” didn’t necessarily stand for “eating each other” as Mama thought it did. A lot of the kids used it as a drug-code nowadays, taking it from that Robinson Crusoe story we’d all suffered through and aligning their calendars based on one of the characters. Nurve and Julianna weren’t making a dirty joke, they were setting a date. Friday. Later today.

  It was going to be a tight timeline, but a workable one. I got out of school at 2:25 and the high school let out at 3:00. The bus got me back home by 2:45 usually, that is unless Robbie Fraley or Chas Nalan or Skip Sullivan made the driver pull over to lecture them for throwing shit out the window or dousing people with the backwash of their energy drinks. And I figured that Mr. Nurve would be picking up Julianna and rolling her back here as quick as 3:10, ’cause first of all the high school was a half mile closer than the middle school, and second, both of them would be anxious for it all drooling and fidgety, hell, I didn’t even think old Purve was gonna be able to do much more than slow down a little, beep, and make Julianna jump into the moving vehicle. It was last day of school, see? Celebration time! And if Nurve the Purve was doing Julianna Conigliaro as Mama was claiming, the fact that she was now out of high school not only confirmed her being legal, but made her appropriate, at least officially, and I was almost as proud of this rather sophisticated insight as I was anxious to see that old bastard cram his package into her and pump until she was holding on for dear life.

  Or whatever.

  I didn’t really know what people looked like when they were doing it. Willie Nagle, this older kid from up the street, had a video, but when he was about to show it to me and Frank Garrison in his room last year his mother had come home unexpectedly, making him fall down to his knees and bury it deep into the shit he had piled up under his bed. She found it two days later and he got grounded. She also took away his Super Nintendo, and that was the last time he bothered talking to me, except that one time he called me a “cunt bubble” when I was walking home and he was drinking quarts of Miller with his friends on the corner, picking up big pieces of cinderblock and banging them against the light poles, trying to make the bulbs darken.

  There had been other opportunities to see naked ladies, Playboys out in the garage, Penthouses up in the boy’s bathroom at school, but they were always flash and dash so we wouldn’t get in trouble and they usually only showed tits. There were butts too, but most of them were photographed sort of hazy or with silk lingerie hanging in front of them.


  And I’d never seen a girl’s kootchie.

  Not without a strip of underwear covering it up, anyway.

  I burst through the front door and shut it with a bang, breathing heavily from running all the way home from the bus stop, dress shirt clinging to me. The place was shadowed with stale sunlight coming in from the kitchen window facing the back alley, and I clapped across the floor. Mama’s shift at the plant ended at 1:30 on Fridays, and she had recently picked up a small contract from the China House take-out restaurant on Bonsall Avenue to put menus in the screen doors of a delivery territory they were going to start advertising for in July. She’d covered Drexel Hill earlier this week, and today she was going to be caught up in Yeadon Heights, at least until around 3:30 or so. The drive back here was ten minutes with the lights, maybe more if she stopped off at McGregor’s for a shot of Jose Cuervo or the outdoor fish stand at Birch and Dickerson where they had fresh bass on ice in big plastic coolers.

  The kitchen clock said 3:10 and I looked through the back window breathlessly.

  No black sedan, not yet. I opened up the flour and sugar cabinet, knowing Mama would kill me if she found out what I was doing, thinking that Mr. Nurve might actually kill me for real if he caught me, and I almost aborted. My plan sucked; in fact, there was no real plan here at all. I had about five minutes to play with before Nurve the Purve came back with Julianna (if I had guessed right about their intentions, that is), and once I got down there I had absolutely no idea where to hide. Then on the back side, I had to hope my landlord did his business quick as a whip and for some reason had to drive the girl home right away, because I’d have to sneak back upstairs here, lock up the door, and replant the key before Mama came in, possibly loaded, looking me up and down the way she always did, hunting for weaknesses and trying to sniff out any indication that I had done something that she’d have to answer for.