Peru

by Gordon Lish

  She said the lawn was my personal responsibility even if the lawn was not my lawn.

  She said that I had responsibilities.

  She said I had better remember I had them.

  This is what the nanny said—she said, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

  This is what the nanny said—“Let it never be said, and said to your shame, all was beauty here before you came.”

  There is something which I have been saving up to tell you, something which I have just gotten ready to tell you—which is that I used to sometimes just go take off my shoes and my socks and go walking on it—just go walking on it over near where it was close to my own property—just go ahead and walk on it on my bare feet on it and think to myself that it felt like the way it would be feeling like to a lady-in-waiting who was walking on her property in a storybook place.

  YOU HAVEN’T EVEN TURNED THE CORNER YET, they haven’t even driven you all of two feet yet, and yet right off the bat the tariff’s already a dollar ten—it’s a dollar ten for just turning the meter on—and then guess what you’ve got to pay out through the nose each ninth of a mile after that!

  Ten cents!

  Did you hear what they get for a measly ninth of a mile?

  It isn’t the money, it isn’t the money—it’s just this whole thing of needless spending, of some kind of totally but totally wasteful spending—when what would it have been for somebody to just for them go ahead and pick the stuff up and walk it eight or so measly blocks?

  Plus which, wouldn’t Henry himself have gotten a big extra kick out of it? I mean, the chance to show off his muscles, a boy like Henry?

  He lifts weights, you know.

  Weights.

  His share of the footlocker, his end of it, and even, all of the duffel bag, it wouldn’t have been any big thing for Henry.

  She used to say share and share alike.

  It’s nice. Listen.

  “Share and share alike.”

  The DeSoto—do they still make a DeSoto?

  They make Buicks.

  Who can tell me about my shoes and socks? In all the world, in all of the whole wide world, is there no one I can go ask about my shoes and socks?

  I did not expect someone to fall over. I did not expect anyone to fall over. I was probably more amazed than he was that a little peewee-size hoe could do a thing like that, make someone just fall over.

  But couldn’t the rake have done the same thing to me?

  What if it is only a question of this—of who lies down first, or of who wants to more?

  What if I stopped using mineral oil?

  In both cases, in both instances, in the case of the footlocker and the lid of the trunk, and in the case of the duffel bag and the back door, nothing would have happened if I had not reached back, or reached in, or been thinking.

  The thing about me is that I believe in God—and I believe that you do too.

  No one rushed to help me. No one even asked if they could. And make no mistake of it, I did not look like just like some maniac bleeding on the street—I was more than presentable—that jacket, the necktie?

  They all just gaped—or looked away.

  No, no one looked away.

  I was right the first time—everyone gaped, everyone looked. If anyone turned, it was to look, not to look away.

  They saw me.

  Sir saw me—and I saw Sir see.

  I’m going to tell you what I know—we are all of us all on our backs, waiting for them to look.

  Like dogs, for instance.

  Like Steven Adinoff, for instance.

  We had to walk everywhere unless we got lifts. He had to walk everywhere unless he got lifts. I sometimes used to hear her tell him to hurry up and get out there so that the Lieblichs would see him and see his shoe and give him a lift. But I never went to look to see if the Lieblichs did.

  I’ll tell you something I used to think—I used to think why didn’t he wear corduroys like I did?

  It was the most Christian smell of all.

  The smell of lilac was the most Christian smell of all.

  It was just blocks to the Woodmere Academy, but it was forever to P.S. #7. However, after I killed Steven Adinoff, my school was P.S. #3, which wasn’t anywhere close to being anywhere near as long of a walk. On the other hand, I do not remember a thing about any of it—the walk, the teacher, the school. I just remember that it was P.S. #3, that and the DeSoto at the other end of the block.

  You can’t beat Vernax for shoes. They make it for furniture, but I say that you cannot beat it, Vernax, for shoes.

  This is the only thing which wasn’t a loss, which was maybe even a gain in a way—namely, the fact that they are probably even in what you could say is better shape for them now than they were in the first place—the leather, after I got the blood off of them, or at least the Vernax on over it.

  We had the sound, we had the volume all the way down. For one thing, let’s not forget that Henry was sleeping. Besides which, it was what? Two, almost two? Maybe even three. You can’t go around with a television blasting away at that hour in a building like this, when it is a building of this quality.

  Here’s something I know.

  Nothing could be more normal—everybody going to sleep, to sleep, even Steven Adinoff.

  It’s like everything they say.

  It’s like “Phil! Is that you, Phil?”

  Or Lackawanna 4-1810.

  I don’t know.

  Kale.

  Okra.

  Collards.

  Turnip greens.

  Mustard greens.

  Chard.

  Chicory.

  Squash.

  Those were the ones.

  Weren’t those the eight ones?

  Here’s another point—the fact that we always could have put the footlocker down and rested—that there is no law that says we would have had to walk it the whole way there, the whole eight blocks, without resting.

  Not that I think, I don’t actually think that it would have been necessary for Henry to rest.

  Actually, there is nothing stopping me from testing it, is there? I mean, the whole thing of it could be put to a test, couldn’t it? Unless Florence would take the position it was petty-minded and small-minded!

  In all fairness, I don’t think it would be fair-minded of Florence for her to see it just as me being petty-minded and small-minded if I suggested, if when the time comes, if when we go to pick Henry up, if I just more or less urge the point that we go ahead and try it back home again—walking it—from Eighty-third to Ninety-first.

  All it takes is for Henry to come home. Couldn’t Henry come home bigger from camp even than I am even?

  YOU HAD TO SEE IT FOR YOURSELF. How weak they looked, for one thing—how weak they looked when they were killing each other, and the third man—if there really was one, if there really was another man, an extra one, a third man—how weak that one, if there actually was that one extra one, how weak he looked, too.

  Or maybe they were all just sleepy—that plus the fact that they felt like being girls.

  Pretty big fellows, I suppose.

  Convicts, I suppose—convicts and guards, I suppose—or maybe just convicts. But who knows, who knows, maybe just guards. It probably didn’t matter which ones you were.

  It didn’t matter to Steven Adinoff which one he was.

  You had to choose. When it came to the sandbox, the whole thing of it was that you had to make up your mind and choose, even though it was the nanny who was the one who was really doing it, even though you knew that it was really the nanny, you still had to act like as if you were making up your mind about it and making a choice—because this was her rule—namely, that a child had to choose.

  I liked the game of Builder best.

  I didn’t like the hoe best.

  I liked the hoe second-best.

  Nobody ever got the rake until Steven Adinoff came along—nobody ever had to have the rake until Steve
n Adinoff had to have it—and the reason Steven Adinoff had to have it was because this time there were three boys and there wasn’t anything else for the third boy to have.

  She went to her chair and sat down on the slats.

  He came around and hooked it up.

  It sizzled like water frying in a frying pan far away—plus the sound of rubber bands snapping the way they do when they keep turning over on themselves over somebody’s wristwatch on her wrist.

  SHE USED TO RUN THE WATER to try to get me going, but it never worked.

  Nothing ever worked.

  Not until the mineral oil worked.

  I could sit for hours.

  I could go for days.

  I used to worry when she ran the water that she might have put it on hot without thinking and that the landlord would come over and catch her at it.

  When his mother came, it’s where I was.

  I was on the toilet.

  Whereas with Henry, God bless him, nothing could be more natural—no fuss, no bother—the boy just goes in there and sits himself down and does his business.

  I have been waiting for God to reach down and make me stop saying these things. But tell me if God even reached down when it was the sandbox!

  I just thought of something.

  Maybe it will be a curse on you for just you hearing this.

  Tell the truth, tell the truth, didn’t you just get just a little bit of a scared feeling from just you hearing this?

  God didn’t lift a finger.

  She didn’t lift one, either.

  And you know why?

  Because no one wanted either one of them to.

  Not even Steven Adinoff himself.

  How can you say you don’t hear it when a head is getting chopped open?

  She saw. She heard.

  Everybody—even the colored man—did.

  I also got him in the face.

  She said she wouldn’t go down the second time unless it was okay if he came along, too.

  I tell you, it wasn’t that I myself wanted to look at hers.

  His thing came out. She got his thing to come out—or, I don’t remember, maybe she got me to. But I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it—I didn’t know that it was just his place—what I thought was this—I thought we had wounded him in it or something—hurt his thing.

  When I came in from killing him, she was coming down the stairs—she was on the stairs coming down them.

  Then we were all three of us just lying back like that, our three different kinds of places showing.

  Someone would say, “Reggie, darling, don’t you think, wouldn’t you say, the child needs air?”

  She went back up and then came back down with the washcloth and then fell apart like just like sticks.

  We did not lie back all of the way. The way you would do it was to lie back but still lean up just enough so that you could still see them looking back down at you while you were showing them your place.

  It’s even what he did!

  What Sir did.

  A dog!

  Listen to me—I know something—I know what I saw in the sandbox, I know what I saw on the roof.

  She went back up and then came back down with it. The idea of it was, I could tell that the idea of it was for her to have something which she could use for her to wash the blood off of me, something to wash off the blood off of me from where he got me with the rake.

  But then she just sat down on the floor like sticks.

  But then she didn’t do anything with it, but then she just sat down with it in her lap—and I saw it that it was making a mess there, that it was making a big mess in her lap because when she went back up to get it, when she had gone back up to get it, she had got it so soppy wet.

  The first thing was linoleum, the floor there at the first was linoleum, we first had linoleum, in front of the front door it was linoleum, so that this was what you first heard it on, you heard it first on this ruffly linoleum whenever he first came home with his shluffy shoe from the railroad station, and then you heard it not on carpet but on wood as he came up the wooden stairs.

  I want you to know this—there was not anything else for me to get the Blue Coal dust off of his place with.

  THERE WASN’T ANY SCREAMING. From start to finish, no one screamed. He didn’t scream and the nanny didn’t scream and Andy Lieblich definitely but definitely didn’t, either. There wasn’t even any talking even, except for when he said, “Nyou nyon’t nyave nyoo nyill nyee,” and “Nyou nyidn’t nyave nyoo nyill nyee,” and also these various different other things about the baseball card with the baseball player on it.

  When all is said and done, neither did my mother—she just sat down on the floor with the washcloth in her lap. She just stayed like that. She just stayed there like that like broken sticks like that with the washcloth in her lap.

  I had to hear for her to hear him yell “Reg!”

  I was probably still making up rhymes. I was probably thinking my family was going to have to buy the Lieblichs new sand for the sand which Steven Adinoff kept raking out of the sandbox.

  Plus a hoe.

  I didn’t even feel it where the rake had got stuck in me and wasn’t going to come loose until he had gotten going yanking upward on it at the same time as when I was yanking downward on it so that both together we could see if we could get it to work itself the rest of the way out of my head.

  The other thing was, I did not want to try to take the washcloth out of her lap or move.

  It’s amazing, it’s amazing, what someone almost dead will do, even just a child.

  He was almost dead when he did it, got me with the rake, then helped me get it yanked back out.

  His face made a different sound than his head did.

  Then when there was just the handle of the hoe left, then it was all different—just from the standpoint of just even just hearing it even.

  You have to imagine dents—like a trench—in his hair, in his head. Whereas with his face, it was more like a peach pit with some of the peach still left stuck to it.

  I say his face, but what I really mean, the part of it which I am actually talking about, it wasn’t his whole face—what I mean is just his cheek when I say his face, the cheek up on one side of it just up under the eye on that side of it.

  I never got anywhere near the harelip itself.

  You know how part of the peach pit will look dry? But in all reality, it is just a question of the look which it has to it. Because if you touched it, if you went ahead and did it, it would be wet-feeling, wouldn’t it?

  Imagine a boy who grows up liking the word chamois—imagine a boy like this, imagine him in comparison with a boy who grows up liking the word carborundum—do you think they would have the same religions?

  Theoretically-speaking?

  MAYBE SOME OF THE TIMES when I wasn’t allowed to come over, maybe some of the times when I did not have her permission to come over, maybe times when she said to me that Andy Lieblich had to play the field, maybe they were all of them times when it was Steven Adinoff who was actually there in my place, maybe he was the boy who was always at the Lieblichs’ when she wouldn’t let me be, when the nanny would say to me things like Rome wasn’t built in a day, tomorrow is another day, every dog will have his day, let the evil be sufficient unto the day thereof.

  How come was it that the nanny used to say to me milk without the chill off was poison for you?

  I still do not know what a shirred egg is.

  Or one which is coddled.

  I actually thought she was going to nyalk nyike nyis too. When my mother was calling me to get off and come down and just let her look at me and talk to me, I thought she was going to nyalk nyust nyike nyee nyid until I killed him.

  It was meant to be a sign to me.

  She meant for it to be a sign to me.

  About her foundation garment or her brassiere, I mean.

  You know these things when you are six. You make no mistake abou
t these things like this when you are six. She wished she could have had me instead. This way she would not have had to have been a mother who was glad to have a boy who was dead. How would you like to be a mother who had to kiss her boy on a lip like that? But what choice did she have? You think he would not feel it if you kissed him even just a little bit to one side of it? I tell you if you were his mother, you would have to kiss him goodnight right on it—and even then you still would not fool him one bit—because just imagine it how he could feel everything with it, how he would have learned to detect everything with it, how he would have learned to test out the world with it, how he would have learned to divine your whole heart with it—plus every bit of what went into, or.of what did not go into, the quality, the character, the deep structure of your kiss.

  Listen to me, I’m telling you something—it is not people and the situations which they are in, it is the situations and the people which are in them!

  My God, my God, you couldn’t even miss it by accident, suppose you just missed it by accident. But tell me if you think he would hate you any less for it if you always kissed him right on it in the center of it!

  It’s not even funny how much that woman owed me for, how much Steven Adinoff’s mother owed me for. But not that she didn’t make an effort to pay it.

  You know what is a ninth of a mile is?

  Measured in city blocks, in relation to city blocks, I would really like for someone to come along and tell me what they happen to think a ninth of a mile is!

  Some families don’t have kissing on the lips. Some families have totally but totally different arrangements. Some families, even the whole question of kissing itself does not even come up as a thing for them to begin with.

  How it went, how exactly it went in terms of every last detail of it, in relation to all of the things in particular of it, this I can’t tell you, this no one can tell you—in the sense of right in the middle of everything, in the sense of her stopping things right in the middle of everything and saying to me this thing of either I leave the room for a minute and then come right back or that she was going to have to—namely, that one or the other of us was going to have to go from the kitchen to the living room for a minute or from the living room to the kitchen for a minute and then come right back to whichever room which it was that she had been taking a look at me in in the first place, and then hearing it, hearing it, hearing her say it and knowing that she was saying it strictly for my benefit, that she was saying it to my mother loud enough for me to hear her say it on purpose, on purpose—“It is binding me in my bust line.”