If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go

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If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go Page 9

by Judy Chicurel


  Everything went exactly as planned. We arrived at Olga’s classroom, and I knocked at the door. Mrs. Myer opened it. “Yes, Katie?” she said. I asked to see Olga Lopez, indicating Ramone and Ophelia standing behind me. “It’s a family matter,” I whispered. She pursed her lips and stared at them for several seconds and then closed the door. Olga came out. She was wearing the beige ski jacket over a frilly black-and-white dress that came only to above her knees, which were discolored with faded bruises. She walked right past me to where Ophelia was huddled against the lockers, Ramone beside her. She and Ramone began speaking in rapid Spanish, then Olga asked Ophelia something and Ophelia began crying again. Olga drew Ophelia against her, caressing her braids, whispering soothing words in Spanish. At least they sounded soothing. I stood there, watching.

  Olga finally turned toward me. “What you looking at, little white girl?” she asked contemptuously. Her eyes were cold as stone. Ramone looked at me and then began speaking in Spanish. I thought he was telling her how I had led them to safety. She looked back over at me. I thought her eyes would change, but they didn’t. “You better get back,” she said. “Go on, get back to class.”

  “But I have the pass,” I said.

  Olga gently disengaged Ophelia’s hands from around her waist. She walked over to me and snatched the pass from my hand, then stood there, her mouth stretched into a cruel smile. “Not anymore,” she said. Ramone looked down at his sneakers. There were tears in my eyes, but I was afraid if I started crying, Olga would only laugh, or yell at me the way the teachers yelled whenever the Spanish kids began crying in class, which was often. The teachers didn’t like them because they were too emotional and couldn’t speak English properly. They became sleepy after lunch and had to be roused from putting their heads in their arms on their desks. They couldn’t understand the simplest directions. Like the time Ava and Marisol Ortiz, beautiful twins in the fifth grade, brought their father’s goat to school for show-and-tell. His name was Gabriel, and he caused quite a commotion. The principal, Mr. Weissman, wanted to call their parents to come take the goat home, but they didn’t have a phone. Gabriel ended up grazing the lonely weeds shooting up between the cracks in the school playground until dismissal time.

  The only teacher who was warm to the Spanish kids was Mr. Farnsworth, the gym teacher. He liked them for the same reason he liked the Negro kids, because they were fast and could outrun everybody else, including the track teams at the three other Elephant Beach elementary schools. “It’s in their blood,” we heard him explaining to Mr. Dillard, the art teacher, whose classroom was next door to the gym. It was true; their light, lithe bodies seemed weightless as they ran the inside track, their sneakers barely touching the varnished floor. Ophelia was a somewhat indifferent athlete, but Ramone was gifted, “fleet of foot, a wonder to behold,” Mr. Farnsworth would say, beaming, eyes on his stopwatch. Ramone’s coordination was superior, and it wasn’t just his legs, his feet; you could see it in his eyes. When he ran, he would lift his face to the sky like a flower to the sun. Sometimes he’d laugh aloud from sheer joy.

  • • •

  Olga may not have taken to me, but Ramone and Ophelia and I became friends. We played together during recess and in gym class. Ramone and I coached Ophelia in English, so that she gradually began picking up words and phrases, speaking in lyrical bursts. I was overjoyed when she asked me to come over after school; I told her I had to go home first and would be there by four o’clock. At home, my mother’s nose came up sharply when I told her where I was going. She questioned me about “this Ophelia Lopez” and when I told her where Ophelia lived, she put down her crossword puzzle and put on her shoes and said she’d walk me over there. When we arrived in front of Ophelia’s building, a three-story, salmon-colored affair, my mother looked up at the broken windows—the colorful sheets being used instead of blinds or curtains (which I thought wildly gay and inventive), the front door hanging off one hinge—heard the foreign shouts from the narrow hallway, and grabbed my hand and did a rapid about-face.

  “You’ll call her from home and ask her to come to your house,” she said, walking quickly.

  “But she doesn’t have a phone,” I said. “Why can’t we just get her now and bring her with us?” We were less than a block away.

  “You’re not setting foot in that building,” my mother said firmly. She ignored my questions and steered me into Leo’s Luncheonette for a black-and-white ice-cream soda. Then we stopped by her friend Harriet’s, who had a huge color television in her den. I watched From Here to Eternity on The 4:30 Movie while they had coffee in the kitchen, and when I ran in to ask if I could have a cold drink, Harriet was shaking her head, saying, “They’re everywhere now, they have their own grocery store for chrissake. How the hell did that get by the council? I mean, where do they think we are, San Juan?”

  “What grocery store?” I asked, and my mother, shaking a packet of Sweet’N Low into her coffee, said firmly, “Go inside, sweetie, we’re talking,” and their conversation didn’t resume until I turned the television volume up again.

  The next day at school I told Ophelia I had developed a nosebleed when I got home, and had to spend two hours sitting up with small ice packs up my nose to stop the bleeding. I didn’t consider it a total lie because this had actually happened when I was seven and had the measles. Ophelia exclaimed in Spanish, then stroked my arm in commiseration. I felt guilty that I’d been so distracted by ice cream and TV, and felt worse at recess when Ramone handed me the yellow tulip he’d picked from someone’s garden across the street from our school. He presented the tulip, then bowed, so that his too-big shirt billowed out and touched the ground. I curtsied and we giggled, and then the three of us began climbing to the top of the jungle gym.

  But that wasn’t my best memory of Ramone. That came later, after Olga had graduated and we were sixth graders ourselves. That was the year we were competing for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Trophy against the three other Elephant Beach elementary schools. The trophy was brought to each school so that we could all see what was at stake. It was huge, with two streams of gold plating down the sides, and Mr. Farnsworth told us that the winning team would have their names engraved on the sides of the trophy. Then he bowed his head and nodded three times, which he always did when he had something important to say. “President John F. Kennedy came from a family of athletes. Who knew what healthy competition was. Who knew what it meant to win. President Kennedy was a winner, all right. He was the first Irish American to be elected president of these United States. He opened the door. The door is now open for anyone to be president. For anyone to win.”

  We all nodded solemnly. President Kennedy had died two years earlier. We’d had a moment of silence and then they let us out of school early. We felt a personal connection to the president because during his campaign, he’d come to Elephant Beach, which was one of the few Democratic towns on Long Island. My father had taken me to see him, had lifted me up high so that I could see him through the crowds. He was riding down Buoy Boulevard, standing in the back of a convertible in his shirtsleeves, smiling and waving at everyone. His teeth were very white. Against the sunlight, he looked more like a god than a regular man. Among us, we agreed it would be an honor to win the trophy named after the president. It would be like having a little piece of him for ourselves forever.

  The trophy was all anyone talked about for days, even kids who weren’t on the track team. Those of us who were reached an exalted status that surpassed making the Principal’s Honor Roll or being a hall monitor and wearing a silver badge, both of which I’d achieved, but neither of which had been this exciting. I had been running track since fourth grade because I was tall and had long legs and was fast, and it brought me closer to the Lopezes. I used to leave the house to walk to school while it was still dark out, eager to get to Stein’s candy store and split a Yoo-hoo and cheese Danish with Ophelia and Ramone and whoever else showed up early, mostly the
Negro kids who lived near the railroad tracks, who would sometimes bring their little brothers and sisters with them while their mothers went to work. Sometimes Kenny the janitor would let us into the gymnasium before homeroom, where we’d practice running relays, using an old ruler from one of the classrooms to pass off to one another. Sometimes we’d just run wildly through the school yard, watching our breath come out in white puffs as the sun rose higher over the bay. But now we had a goal and a purpose, and the whole school was cheering for us, especially for Ramone. His nickname was Rocket. “Hey, Rocket,” white kids who never talked to the Spanish kids would hail him in the hallways. Even the teachers smiled at Ramone now, responding to his inner light. None of them yelled at him or made sarcastic remarks when he didn’t know an answer to a question in class. Everyone loved his rhythm, the way his feet skimmed the earth.

  The day of the meet, I was up at dawn. The meet was scheduled for ten o’clock and the bus was picking the team up at nine twenty in front of Central District Elementary. My father wouldn’t let me leave until it was light out and offered to drive me, but then discovered the car had a flat tire from a bent nail. My mother insisted I eat something before leaving the house, but then my younger brother threw up all over the kitchen table from a virus nobody knew he had and the house was in an uproar and I couldn’t get into the bathroom on time. I ended up running the three long blocks to school with tears streaming down my face because I was using up valuable energy that should have been saved for the race. I didn’t want to let the team down. By the time I got there, the bus had already departed and now I was crying in earnest. I heard somebody shout my name and looked up to see Ramone, Ophelia and their cousin Julio coming toward me, all wearing black shorts, white tee shirts, and high, white ribbed socks with black piping around the top, the kind you could buy at Irv’s Bargain Center, three for a dollar fifty. They, too, had missed the bus. “Eddie was supposed to drive us, but he never showed up,” Ramone explained, panting. Ophelia’s eyes filled with tears. Julio shook his head; he was short and stocky with slicked-back hair and a low forehead. “Girls always making things worse,” he said disgustedly. “Fuck it, it’s not like they giving us money or nothing.” He rolled saliva in his mouth and spat it out on the sidewalk.

  Ramone looked like he was searching the air for solutions. He felt around in his pockets and came up with two dimes. “How much money you got?” he demanded. “Quick!” Ophelia brought forth seven cents. Julio just laughed until Ramone spoke to him sharply in Spanish; I’d never heard him speak so sharply before. Julio narrowed his eyes but he flipped a quarter out of his pocket into the air so it would fall to the sidewalk. Ramone caught it in mid-flight. He looked at me. I hung my head, feeling more tears coming up in my throat. “I don’t have any money,” I said. I’d been in such a hurry leaving the house that I’d forgotten to take my change purse. “White people always got money,” Julio said, but Ramone was already pulling my hand, coaxing me to run with him toward the taxi stand at the train station.

  At the taxi stand, we found one lone green-and-white-checkered cab; the driver was an older man with silvery hair, sitting with the window open, reading the paper. We climbed into the cab, shouting instructions. The inside of all the Elephant Beach taxis smelled of cigar smoke. The driver was unperturbed; he didn’t even lift his eyes from his newspaper as he said, “Fifty cents a head, my friends.”

  “We have fifty-two cents,” Ramone said. The driver shrugged and kept reading. “I’ll leave,” I said, feeling it was only fair, since I didn’t have any money, but Ramone held my hand fast and hard. Everyone began clamoring, about the track meet, how they were waiting for us, how a photographer from the Elephant Beach Gazette would be there. Ophelia was pulling on her hair, shouting in Spanish. I was crying and yelling at the same time. Julio just looked out the window, snapping his gum. Finally, Ramone tugged at the driver’s elbow until he looked up. “It’s the John F. Kennedy Memorial Trophy,” he said patiently. “They’ll print our names on the sides in gold. The trophy will go in the glass case next to the principal’s office for all to see. If we win, we’ll bring glory to our families, to the school, to the entire town.” He spoke solemnly, with great dignity. I realized that he had made this speech before, somewhere, to someone, or perhaps just in front of the mirror. Perhaps that was what he did while combing the curl that fell forward onto his forehead.

  The driver looked at Ramone. He turned and looked at all of us. Then he sighed, put down his paper, and started the engine.

  “Please drive quickly,” Ramone said. “The meet starts at ten o’clock, and my race is first. I’m the fastest runner.”

  “It’s true,” I said, in case the driver thought he was just conceited. “We can’t win without him.”

  “Don’t push your luck, kids,” the driver said, but the taxi picked up speed. When we passed the steepled clock at City Hall, it was seven minutes to ten. We squirmed on the seat. Ramone hung his head between his knees. Ophelia put her lips to her fingertips and then crossed herself. Julio turned around and looked at me with a twisted smile. “White girl rides for free,” he said. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but I didn’t. I wished he wasn’t there. He had squinty eyes and during recess he stood against the wire fence, watching everyone run with a sneering expression on his face. He had none of the grace or beauty of the rest of the Lopez clan. I didn’t understand how he’d gotten into that family in the first place.

  The meet was at Rum Hill Elementary School, up in the Dunes. It was the silk stocking district of Elephant Beach, set slightly apart from the rest of the town. Whenever Uncle Manuel drove the kickball team to games there in his truck, the Rum Hill kids laughed at us, called us the nigger school, but never right in front of the Negro girls, because they were afraid of getting beat up. They were sly and wily and our sworn enemies. At the last practice before the track meet, Ramone said, “When you run against them, put in your mind that if you don’t win the race, your mother will die.” There was a collective gasp among us, and Raynelle Johnson started jumping from side to side, saying, “Don’t you be putting no bad mouth on my mama!” Ramone smiled, his dimples shining. He said patiently, “Think how afraid it makes you to think of it. That’s what will make you win the race.”

  The cab driver made the turn up the long driveway to Rum Hill Elementary. He drove the length and then curved around back to the parking lot. We could see the crowds in the bleachers, see Mr. Farnsworth in his striped gym pants and lucky red bow tie pacing the field, looking at his watch. He was waiting for Ramone. The first race was the boys’ hundred-yard dash; the relay would follow. From the windows of the cab, we saw Mr. Farnsworth shake his head and throw up his hands. We saw the runners for the hundred-yard dash line up at the starting line. From the distance they looked like toy soldiers waiting to get shot. “Pull up!” Ramone shouted. “Pull up to the line! You can go through the grass, that way, pull up, pull up!” Caught by the urgency in his voice, the driver obeyed. Before the cab had even rolled to a complete stop, Ramone shot out of the seat so quickly it was as though he vaporized. “Jesus,” the driver said, getting out of the cab. The other runners had just taken off in their lanes when Ramone came up behind them. The photographer from The Elephant Beach Gazette said he had never seen anything like it in his life. “The kid comes out of nowhere,” he said, afterward, “nowhere! And the race already started! And he’s running like the furies of hell are chasing him, right? And there’s one point, one instant, where I swear on my mother’s life, he was airborne. He was running so fast, his feet weren’t touching the ground. I tried, but the camera couldn’t catch it. I wanted everyone to see it, but—Jesus! Would that have made a great front page, or what?” Still, Ramone made the paper; we all did. The Gazette dedicated an entire page to Central District Elementary, a photomontage with Ramone at the center, smiling, his arms around the John F. Kennedy Memorial Trophy.

  • • •

  Ramone never came back ou
t of the forsaken Pancake Heaven. He disappeared, just like in junior high school, where we all got swallowed up whole and spit back out again. That first year, in seventh grade, I was rudderless; all the things that had served me well at Central District Elementary went down the toilet. There were cliques and hierarchies that I didn’t understand. Suddenly, it mattered where you lived, where you bought your clothes, how you wore your hair. In gym class, there were too many sniggering girls waiting to laugh at the way your legs looked in your gym uniform. I became self-conscious about things that had never occurred to me before. I would walk to school with my stomach clenched and knotted with dread, homesick for the mornings at Central District Elementary when we would run with abandon around the school playground before the first bell. My mother saw how it was with me; she was concerned, but distracted. That fall, my brother had contracted pneumonia, running such a high fever he’d become delirious, and on the way to the doctor’s office we thought we’d lost him. He was hospitalized for several weeks and couldn’t go to school for a month afterward, so the household revolved around him and his weekly blood tests and trying to keep him quietly entertained. My mother would sit by his bed while he slept, watching him breathe, and if I asked her something as simple as if she’d ironed my navy blue skirt, she either didn’t answer or snapped at me impatiently. I missed the times she’d come into my room to say good night, and we’d end up talking until my father called for her to turn out the lights. Now at night, I would lie in bed, staring into darkness, wondering what was to become of me.

 

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