by Gordon Lish
Here is a good question for us—namely, which room of our house was it, the living room or the kitchen? And another thing—did I or didn’t I have my shoes and socks off—and if I did, then did I go get them and put them back on again, or did I just pick them up and carry them back home with me—or maybe did I do neither one of those two things but just instead just left them where they were, left them there where Steven Adinoff was, plus Andy Lieblich and the nanny?
That is, if my shoes and socks had ever been actually off of me to begin with.
I was dead wrong about the colored man. The colored man didn’t really have anything to do with any of it—the colored man didn’t actually have the first thing to do with anything which had to do with the sandbox. It was only in my way as a child that I thought he did. I thought it was the colored man and the nanny together, that there was some way in which the pair of them were in charge of it together. However, in all reality, the colored man really didn’t have anything to do with anything at the Lieblichs’, except for looking out for the Lieblichs’ Buick, except for whisk brooming out the Lieblichs’ Buick and for washing it and for waxing it. But in my mind it was all of it different. In my mind, the colored man was a big part of everything which went on in the sandbox—in my mind, he was just as big a part of it as the nanny herself was, even though I really knew he actually wasn’t, even though I really knew I was just making all of this up.
But I don’t know where the thought came to me from, or why I wanted it to. The colored man was just a colored man who went around and washed the cars which people had in their garages and who sometimes kept on going and gave them Simonize jobs. He was just the colored man that you told the maid to make come over if you had the money for it and actually had a car for him to work for you on.
It was just the nanny. When it came to who had the say about the sandbox, I don’t think there was anybody who had as much of it as the nanny all by herself had, not probably even any of the Lieblichs.
The nanny made up all of the rules. All of the rules which went for the sandbox the nanny said were all of her own doing. Even as to the question of who was going to be allowed to come over and play in it, the nanny was the only one who had the say even about any of this, either.
The nanny said it didn’t matter what anybody else said—that it didn’t matter to her what Mr. Lieblich said, or Mrs. Lieblich, or what Andy Lieblich said, or what Iris Lieblich did. The nanny said it wasn’t any of them who had anything to say about who was going to get to play in the sandbox and who wasn’t, or about how you were supposed to play in it if you were the one who was going to be allowed to come over and play in it. The nanny said it was all of it up to her, that the whole question of anything which had to do with the sandbox was all of it up to her, that the whole thing of the sandbox was nobody’s but her own personal private business—and that if anybody didn’t like it like that, then that they could go lump it, then that they could go whistle a merry tune, go fly a kite, jump in the lake, mind their own Ps and Qs, tend to their own knitting.
It wasn’t the colored man at all—it was all all of it all the nanny all by herself. She was the only one who could tell you if you could come over and what time you could and when you had to clean everything up and put everything away, plus whether or not if you were playing nicely enough for you not to have to go home right away, plus even which were the games you could play—namely, the one of Gardener or of Farmer or of Builder, and then once you picked one, once you picked the game, the nanny always gave you a pail and said “Shovel, hoe, or rake?”
I really can’t begin to remember about some of the other things. About what the nanny looked like, for instance—I can’t think of it. But I can think of the rubber bands, her wrist, of the nanny’s wrist, of the wristwatch.
I was a child.
As such, I was a child in and of myself.
I tell you, when you live next door to someone richer, there is no end to what will enter your thoughts.
It made me crazy, I admit it.
The colored man, for instance, I had the feeling that when I was in the sandbox that it was my job to be in it in a certain way which made me in it in place of him. However, in all actuality, I don’t need for anyone to tell me that the colored man did not really know anything about me, or think anything about me, or that he probably did not even know where I actually lived, that it was just next door to the Lieblichs and that we had to have a landlord and that I was six just like Andy Lieblich was.
The colored man, he only came there for the Buick.
If it wasn’t rainy or wasn’t snowy or wasn’t blowy, that is. But in my memory of what it was like before we had to move away from next door to the Lieblichs, it was always weather in general like summer, like August in particular, back before the particular August when I used a toy hoe to kill a boy whose name was Steven Adinoff back in Woodmere when I was six.
IT WAS ALWAYS OKAY WITH MY MOTHER. I didn’t ever have to have any permission from her—I didn’t have to go get any permission from my mother to ever go play over at Andy Lieblich’s or to go over there to watch the colored man wash the car. I didn’t have to have her permission for anything, I don’t think, except for the thing of going across the street or of going on past where the Aaronsons’ property came to a stop on the other side of the Lieblichs’. Not that either one of those were things that I myself would ever have asked my mother for her permission for, since I just took it for granted that if you went out there to those particular places, you were out there where the Christians were.
But as to the question of whether you could go out or not go, it was always okay with my mother for you always to go out. I think she thought it was good for your health—or else that she just did not have the time to think about the question at all. Whereas the nanny had a whole different approach to the subject of the weather—because so far as the nanny was concerned, there were all kinds of times when the outdoors was absolute poison, time after time when it did not pay for you to go outside, times when you were probably taking your life into your hands if you were stupid enough for you to go do it, times when to get fresh air was definitely out of the question for you, when in all honesty and sincerity it was the better part of valor for boys to stay indoors and keep a careful vigil—especially if you yourself were actually a delicate boy, which is what the nanny said what Andy Lieblich was.
This is what I wanted.
I wanted to be a boy who was delicate like Andy Lieblich was—I wanted to be a boy who was every bit as delicate as that boy was. That’s the kind of boy I wanted to be. The kind of boy I wanted to be would be a boy who could not keep any fried foods down or miss his nap or not get his bath in a bathtub or ever have to get a sandwich off the kitchen counter and not be served his meat pattie when it was high time for lunch or for him to have to have his milk without the chill off.
But even if it was nice out, even if the weather was absolutely totally perfect out, then you still could not just go ahead and say that that just automatically meant that you could come over and play in the sandbox with Andy Lieblich, even if he himself, even if the nanny said that Andy Lieblich was actually going to be coming out any minute to play in it. What I mean is that there was always no end of things which might have to make the nanny make up her mind that she was just not going to be able to give you her complete and total permission at this particular juncture yet—namely, if it looked to her, for instance, like you were coming down with something, or like you had the first signs of some other thing, or that even if you did not look to her like you were actually getting anything, then it maybe looked to her like this was going to be a day when you could not be trusted, like this was going to be one of those days when no matter how much you might want to promise the nanny to the contrary, you just could not help yourself, you just could not help but not play nicely, not even if your life depended on it—or maybe she just said that it was a matter of horizons, that a boy like Andy Lieblich had to keep stretching his horizo
ns and for him play the field whenever it was humanly possible.
There were lots of times when I was not the one who got to come over. There were lots of times when the nanny had to say to me that she herself was not God, that she alone could not just wave a wand, that there were some things which were beyond the powers of anyone to control them, that she did not have the strength to move heaven and earth even if this is what I and everyone else thought she did.
But if there were other boys, if Andy Lieblich actually had over other boys, I myself never saw them—Steven Adinoff being the sole exception, Steven Adinoff being the first and last exception, Steven Adinoff being the single solitary exception—but after him there were probably lots of them.
Never more than two at a time in the sandbox, never more than two boys in the sandbox at a time, this was one of the nanny’s strictest regulations—whereas my idea was this—that I was the boy who lived next door to Andy Lieblich, which was supposed to give me the first chance to be the boy who was the second one. But what the nanny said was that things like this were the very reason why it had to come out just exactly the opposite—that the first shall be last and also vice versa.
I always knew what the nanny was saying.
I always knew what everybody was saying.
I never didn’t understand anybody saying anything.
Even the colored man when he said things, even though the colored man almost never said actually anything.
He said chamois, for one thing.
And then there were the things which he said I should eat, the things he said which I should go home and tell my mother to get busy and start cooking for me for me to eat—he had all of these different things, he had all of these different things—they were greens, they were leafy greens, a total of eight of these different kinds of leafy greens, I think, and I’ll bet I could tell you the name of every last one of them, even though the colored man only told me once when in fact he finally got around to actually telling.
I always wanted to kiss the colored man. I always felt like I was going to have to kiss the colored man. I always felt like I wasn’t going to be able to help myself or stop myself or do anything to be able to keep myself from falling toward his lips and kissing the colored man.
But I didn’t. I never did it. I saw how pink his palms got, I saw how when he got them wet how pink his palms got, and I never did do it, even though there were times when his back was not always facing me.
But he was mostly working on the Buick if he was at the Lieblichs’, so his back was in general always facing me because, as such, he had to face the Buick, unless it was one of the times when he went into the garage for changing shirts and for getting things or for putting things back.
In all truth, it is true he did not speak—it’s true that the colored man mainly did not speak—but if you watched him the way I watched him, if you really kept your eye on him the way I did, then you never ended up feeling that the colored man didn’t let you in on what kinds of things he thought. But this was probably all in my head. I was probably just making all of this up in my head—thinking, for instance, that you could look at him doing things and then get ideas about him from that—from the way he flattened out the chamois cloth, for instance, or just folded up a rag. Even the way he shook out the Old Dutch Cleanser onto the scrub brush the maid always left for him for brushing up the white-walls, even the way the colored man did a thing like that, just tapping the side of the can with just one finger instead of actually turning it over and shaking it upside-down, even a thing as little as this looked to me like it was something which only the colored man did—and that if he did it for me, if he did it in front of me, then the thought I had from that was that the colored man specifically wanted it to mean something to me, that it was like a statement which the colored man had actually gone ahead and decided to make for my own personal benefit—just things like getting the lid of the Simonize can back on again by just pressing it down with his thumb, or things like the way he let the water from the hose run out over the back of the hand he used for washing the car with the sponge, just the way he made the water come out and gush out over the back of his hand, just things like that made me feel that the colored man was behaving that way, was doing things like that only because he could tell that I liked him to, only because he could tell that the boy who was standing just in back of him and who was watching him, who was watching his every single little move, could not have been paying any closer attention to every single little bit of it—and make no mistake of it, I couldn’t have, I couldn’t have!—the way the water streamed over the veins which were in the back of his hand, the way the water ran out over it and then broke itself up into different streams that just as quickly streamed away and were all gone away—but then there was a fresh gush of water and then it started and ended all over again, his veins, his hand.
Even if he didn’t actually say it, I think we can say he theoretically said it—the statement of what I stood to gain, of what kind of a future I would stand to have as a man, from getting my mother to feed me the eight greens which the colored man said to me he ate.
I loved watching the colored man—but it wasn’t anything like the love, it didn’t come anywhere close to the love which I had for the times when I was actually with Andy Lieblich in his sandbox. This was the single best feeling in the world—this was the single best thing in the whole wide world—there wasn’t a sadness that I myself could ever have thought of which just being in the sandbox with Andy Lieblich could not have totally but totally got rid of, especially if I stopped to think to myself, especially if right in the middle of doing something, of getting sand and filling up a pail with sand to make a building, for instance, or of packing it down to get it to really have the best chance of sticking together when it finally came back out of the pail, for instance, when I finally turned the pail over and tapped it and got it to come back out, the sand, especially if I said to myself that the colored man was taking all of this in, even if it actually happened to be a day when the colored man wasn’t even there at the Lieblichs’ in the first place, or even if it was a day when he was—either way, could he see around the house from the front of the Lieblichs’ property to the back of the Lieblichs’ property and see me doing things? Of course not, of course not—no one had to tell me that the colored man could not actually in fact do this, of course—but even so, even so, it still felt to me like he could—or it felt good to me when I thought that he could, even if I really knew otherwise, even if I knew that the colored man was probably just a big man and a strong man and was not any of the other things I thought he was.
I was always the boy who was winning.
Whichever one the game was, whichever game Andy Lieblich and I were playing, whether it be Builder or Gardener or Farmer, I was always head and shoulders above Andy Lieblich when it came to who would come out winning it, to who would be the one who would come out being better at it, even if he himself always had the shovel—and make no mistake of it, even if nobody actually said it was a game, even if nobody had gone ahead and said it was a game to begin with, set it up that way as a game to begin with, still and all, there was always a winner, there was always a winner, and the loser knew it just as much as the winner did, just as the nanny always herself did, just as she herself from just sitting there did.
The chair she sat in was a slatted chair. By this I mean that it was a chair which was made out of wooden slats like slats of wood, which I think, I have the idea, that this was a pretty common kind of a chair for the out-of-doors back in those days, which were the days of 1938 and 1939 and 1940.
His muscles were so amazing to me—the muscles that I could see in his back when the colored man had his back facing me, I could see them even though he didn’t have his shirt off, even though he always had a shirt on, except for when he went into the garage to do his changing into one and then, later on after that, out of one—you could always see the colored man’s muscles through his clothes because he had so
many of them and they were so big.
I tell you, it was so amazing to me, it all was so amazing to me, how wide his wrists were, how thick his wrists were, or how the way the back of his hand looked when he kept the water from the hose always running over it so that there always would be fresh clean water in the sponge and so the dirt wouldn’t get rubbed back on all over the Buick again after the colored man had got it all washed off.
You know what was amazing to me?
The way the colored man turned over the sponge.
It made me tremble. It made me almost tremble when the colored man lifted the sponge up off of the Buick just a little ways and then flopped it back down over on the other side of it—and then some of the soppiness in it flounced out, flushed out, flooded out, before the colored man mashed his hand again back down on it.
Fluffed out—that’s the way it looked—I am trying to really say the way all of these things actually looked.
You could really make a list of favorite things. You can’t do it anymore, you can’t do it now—but you could have done it every day of your life when you were six—Andy Lieblich and the sandbox first, the colored man after that, the colored man next, the colored man and the Buick after Andy Lieblich and the sandbox, then Miss Donnelly and the storybooks coming third.
Other things which I can think of are these—namely, seeing Iris Lieblich’s place, or actually her seeing my place, Iris Lieblich seeing my place—and then the rest would be things I smelled or hearing the corduroy or just looking at the house where the Lieblichs lived.
I almost forgot.
Mah-jongg—I almost forgot.
When the ladies came over to my house to play mah-jongg with my mother—talk about favorite things, talk about favorite things—the sound of them doing it and the things they said, to me this was one of the greatest things in the world—plus the fact that it usually worked out to me getting at least one whole handful of All Sorts, which was another one of my favorite things.