Scags at 7

by Deborah Emin

  Odessa rinsed out a dish cloth and handed it to me. It was hot and I had to juggle it back and forth from one hand to the other. I tried to get all the sticky juice off the table. I washed off every plate while everyone watched me. I tried to get it all up, but it had gone everywhere. I sang a little tune and did a little soft shoe as I went around the table trying to clean it up.

  Odessa said, Scags, why don’t you let me finish what you started, you’re making a mess of the glass. No, I said very loud. Pops flinched. I scrubbed the table clean and then Mama told me to go to my room.

  Why is everyone so quiet, why isn’t Pops singing or whistling? Why do I have to go to my room? I’d rather go outside and ride my bike, I said to Mama. I’m saying to you, Mama said, go to your room now.

  I saluted her, turned toward Odessa who was rinsing out the dish cloth and she said, What are you looking at me for, you heard your mother. Okay, I said to them all, even Pops who was staring out the window and not paying attention to me. Okay. I’m going. Do you read me? Over and out. I saw my feet as two big cabooses, so heavy and tired I could barely lift them up the stairs. I called to them, I’m going. No one said anything. I’m at the top of the stairs, I said. Mama said, Go to your room and close the door. I made my caboose shoes slide slowly and slowly and when I got to my room, I slammed the door.

  The sun is coming into my room like swords being drawn for a fight. One sword smashes my pillows. One sword sits hot and heavy on the foot of my bed. I walk to the windows for a little breeze and so I don’t have to think about Mama being angry with me and Pops not even seeing me. I look at my tree. It is so tall and it can’t possibly fall down. Oh, I say, turning my head, there’s Davy and his mother in their back yard. She’s talking to him, her hair is blonde and sparkles in the sun. Davy is kicking at the ground with the toe of his shoe, dust rising and spinning, grey and white and I say, Davy, hey Davy. He doesn’t hear me. I call again. His mother hears me and takes Davy’s hand and leads him inside. I want to go for a ride with Davy and tell him it’s okay now about my shiner. Surely we could play cowboys and Indians. I walk away from the window to get my gun with caps in it. I want to shoot Davy even though I’m not allowed to shoot the caps inside. I take three giant steps to the chair at my desk and hanging from it is my holster and gun. I pick it up and put it around my waist and belt it. I go back to the window.

  I hear someone calling my name. I hear it like a baseball fitting into a mitt. I hear it and I know it is Julia. I turn my head and there she is in her back yard, standing on the patio chair, her arms running in circles, her long arms and legs, her face smiling and laughing and happy. I put my palm on the screen as if I could magically reach through it.

  Come on, Julia says. Come here, I’m home. I say to myself this is a special occasion, this is reason to sneak out of the house. I unbuckle my holster and let it fall on the floor and yell quietly, I’ll be right there.

  I leave my room on tip toe. On tip toe I walk out of my room and close the door, down the stairs, and I think oh keen-o I’ll get a cigar for us. Pops won’t miss one of his schimmelpfennigs, oh hey, I take two out of the wooden box on the coffee table, put them in my back pocket, I leave the house by the front door.

  Jumping the hedge between Julia’s house and mine, I run run run to her. Julia is jumping all over the patio and when she sees me she stops jumping and looks at me funny. What? I ask her. She puts her finger to my eye, my black eye. Julia asks me what happened. I got into a fight. What for? She asks, and why do you fight? Did it hurt? Only a little bit, a tiniest hurt. Now it itches. And your hair, Scags, Why did you cut your hair? I didn’t cut it. Pops cut it. Why? Julia asks and I say he couldn’t help it. He got confused.

  I don’t understand, Julia says. I say, It’s okay, Odessa fixed it.

  Who hit you? Julia asks again. I say right away, No one you know. Do you want to smoke a cigar? Who don’t I know Scags? Julia asks but as I pull the two little cigars out of my pocket, Julia stops asking the questions. She laughs and jumps around again and I put my fingers to my lips, Shush Julia. Please. Not so loud and she whispers, Let’s go inside. My mother is sleeping. What about your father? I ask and she says, I don’t know, we’ll see.

  We leave the patio and walk toward her back door as if we had nothing special on our minds. Nothing special at all. No we’re just going inside for a few minutes, a little rest from the sun.

  We go in the back door, through the kitchen where Mrs. Arthur’s big black purse sits on the table and Julia steals a book of matches from there and we walk down the hall. Mr. Arthur is in his bathroom with the door open. He doesn’t see us because he’s got a little scissor up his nose and he’s cutting the hairs. We try not to stare or giggle. He doesn’t see us and Julia sticks her fist in her mouth to keep quiet. We take giant steps to the bathroom down the hall that she shares with her mother.

  Julia grabs my arm and pulls me into the bathroom and closes the door quietly. We stand in the dark. We each have a cigar and we clench them between our teeth. I turn on the light over the sink and we sit down on the edge of the tub. It is hard and cold.

  Julia asks, Do you really want to smoke this? She says, Let’s pretend. She pretends to smoke it and to blow smoke like a big kid and she says, Look at my smoke rings. I take the matches from her and light one. I put it up to the tip of her cigar. She takes a puff and lets the smoke sit in her mouth. I light the tip of mine and try to inhale and I almost throw up. I start to choke because it is so hot and I start to cough and I can’t stop. Julia jumps up and down telling me to please keep quiet. Of course, I can’t. I’m choking to death.

  There is a knock on the door. That shuts me up. We run the cigars under water and throw them in the garbage. The door opens. There is Mr. Arthur. He looks at Julia and then at me. He fills up the doorway.

  What’s going on in here? Julia, he says, looking straight at her with big eyes as if he doesn’t really want to know what’s going on but he must because he is the father. Julia says, We weren’t doing anything. Scags, Mr. Arthur says, Do you want to tell me what you were doing in here? It smells like someone’s been smoking. I don’t want to make anyone else mad at me, so I say, We were just practicing but we won’t do it anymore, I promise, I say. Julia promises too.

  Mr. Arthur looks a little angry now and he tells Julia she is grounded for the rest of the day. And you Scags, I won’t tell anyone in your house what went on here but I expect you to. So run along now. Julia go to your room.

  I walk back down the hallway and out their front door and around the corner and up the front walk. I know Mr. Arthur is angry at me, and I don’t like that, but maybe if I just tell Odessa nothing worse will happen today.

  As I walk toward the door, Julia jumps out of the bushes and scares me. She climbed out of her bedroom window. She wants to be with me. As the clouds punch out the sun and the breeze turns wilder, all I want to do is sit with Julia under my tree and listen, look, see and smell the new storm coming up. Julia skips along at my side. We go quickly into the back yard and sit down over Lizzie’s grave and we hold hands. Julia is here. Julia is home.

  41

  Bookmobile II

  E very day now, it’s Mama saying, Scags do this or Celia do that. She is making me mad. She is mad at Pops, too, always telling him to stop staring at her, to eat his dinner and to stop drinking and bowling. First he looks at her like what are you talking about and then he laughs, laughs so funny, like he’s laughing at something neither Mama nor I can see. He laughs. Mama gets up from the table and yells at Odessa that there are water spots on the glasses. Odessa doesn’t say anything but I know she knows Mama doesn’t mean it.

  It is only two weeks before school starts again. Oh no. I got the letter in the mail telling me what teacher I’m going to have and what room number. I’m going to have Mrs. Showalter. Mrs. Showalter’s father was a friend of Boomer’s. Maybe she’ll like me best because of that.

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nbsp; With the teeny clouds running all over the blue sky, it feels kind of cool today. Under the tree is even a cooler place to sit and in my shorts and t-shirt I see little bumps on my skin, on my arms, which are covered with freckles and on my legs. I don’t think Mama will let me ride today on Julia’s new tandem bicycle. Mr. Arthur bought Julia this keen-o bike and she said we could take a long ride today, maybe all the way to Church Street and Crawford, the furthest away I’m allowed to go on my own. There is a lot of busy traffic there. It’s not so easy to cross. I need a grownup to go with me.

  Julia says, Scags. I look up and across the yard and she is standing in her mother’s flower bed. I see her with her long blonde hair tied up on her head like a ballerina. She pretends to be smoking a cigarette but it’s a candy cane, and I say, Can I have one too? You have to come with me to the bookmobile if you want one, she says.

  I stand up and wipe the dirt off the back of my shorts. I walk to my front yard and Julia walks in the same direction. Through the bushes she hands me a red and white candy cane. I stick it in my mouth and at first it makes my eyes tear but then I like the sticky sweetness of it. As I pass by the front door, there is Pops holding it open, whistling, leaning against the door and whistling nothing I’ve ever heard before and sort of like someone who doesn’t know how to whistle trying to whistle.

  Hi Pops, I say, but he is looking at his shoes, not at me. He’s wearing his shiny black shoes and his green suit with a white shirt and the green and yellow tie. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a rock, one of my rocks, and hands it to me. It’s the one with fool’s gold in it and it glows. I say, Keep it Pops. I can get more. He tosses it in the air, pulls it to him and replaces it in his pocket. Thanks, he says.

  Julia says, Come on Scags, let’s go. Pops turns his head in the direction of Julia’s voice but when he looks at her and after she says, Hi Mr. Morgenstern, he says to me, Well got to cook the bacon, and he opens the door and walks back into the house.

  What’s wrong with your dad? Julia asks me in my ear as we walk down the lawn to the bookmobile. Oh, he’s just tired, I say, I say, Maybe I should get him a book to read. What will you get him? Julia asks. He doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to read.

  What do you mean? I ask Julia. He’s fine. People who are tired like to get into bed with a good book.

  Yes Scags, he’ll be fine soon, Julia says as we climb up the two little steps into the bookmobile where the old lady sits, reading at her table, not even looking up when we come in, I say, He’s just got a lot on his mind. Then I say, Hi bookmobile lady, we’re here.

  She looks up at us and says, Edna, my name is Edna. Your names are Julia and Celia.

  No, I say, she’s Julia and I’m Scags. Just plain old Scags.

  Scags is it, well then Scags, what book would you like today? I don’t know, I say, not something sad like Old Yeller. Maybe I could read Heidi again.

  Scags, you’ve read it a million times, Julia says, so I say, Well then I’ll read it a million more times until I have it memorized.

  Would you like to live with your grandfather? Julia asks me and I say, Boomer’s okay. But not to live with.

  Julia says, My mother bought me Shirley Temple glasses to drink out of. When you come over again, you can drink from them too. I love Shirley Temple. She can sing and dance and everything and she has all those curls in her hair, you could do it too Scags.

  I don’t want to look like dumb old Shirley Temple, I say and wait for Edna to tell me to be quiet but I guess since we are the only ones here we can talk as loud as we want to. I say out loud, because I’m thinking it and it just comes out—Fuck Shirley Temple. Edna says, Scags none of that. You hear me? I say, Okay. I’m sorry.

  I want to read a real story. I want to read about Abraham Lincoln or Beethoven or Clara Barton—Julia says, But Scags you’ve read all of those. Why are you so angry? Can’t you be nice?

  Well, I say, yes…I can be nice…Let’s leave and go sing songs, I want to hear you sing your camp songs.

  What is that you’re talking about? Edna asks and she stands up from behind her table and walks toward us. You know, she says, sometimes you think you want to read but what you really want to do is to run around and scream and yell. Maybe today you can’t sit quietly in here and look at books.

  I look at her mouth moving, her tongue and lips all move. I see the pencil stain on her lower lip and when I look at her eyes, I see how pretty she is.

  I say, We’ll leave now, come on Julia.

  But Julia doesn’t want to leave right away. I say, We can come back in a little while. Edna takes the book Julia is looking at, an illustrated dictionary with big pictures of bicycles in there but no pictures of the tandem bike she got as a present. Julia stomps out of the bookmobile, stomps to her front lawn and lies down on the grass on her back and looks at the sky. She is angry at me.

  Mrs. Showalter is going to be my teacher, she says.

  Oh shit, I say. Well hell’s bells, I continue and put my hand over my mouth so that I don’t say anymore what is on my mind. I say to Julia with my hand over my mouth, Me too.

  What? Julia says. I can’t understand you. Are you in my class?

  I shake my head back and forth, up and down, from side to side.

  Well what is it Scags?

  I take my hand down. I take a deep breath and will only say, Me too. I don’t want to be angry at Julia. I don’t want to hate her but I do, so I say bye to her. She raises a hand to me so I can help her off the ground but I walk away. When she calls out Scags, want to go for a bike ride, I just keep walking to my house.

  42

  Bowling II

  I t is Saturday night, no Odessa, just the three of us and after dinner Pops says, Let’s go bowling. Mama sits up straight in her chair before I can say, Yeah, let’s go, let’s go tonight, right now. Let’s get out of this house and go somewhere where there are more interesting things to do, let’s let’s. Mama says before I can say that, How many beers have you had Nate? I don’t care how many beers he’s had, he can still bowl and I’ll get one of those little balls, the lightweight ones and Pops will help me roll it down the lane.

  Mama says, We’ll go for a line, that’s all. Pops says, What’s the rush? Scags can come too, which of course I had already planned, the thought had never entered my mind that they would leave me behind.

  We go to the bowling alley and it is full of the smack and clatter and rumble of big black balls traveling very fast down the alley and knocking over lots of pins. I stand on a seat and watch everyone, see that funny walk to the line, the arm stretched out, a ball rolling, rolling, will it knock those white pins down?

  Pops gets the lane and the shoes and the balls, Mama goes with him. I go to our lane and sit down waiting. I see a boy from my school with his parents, a silly boy I really don’t know, he leaves his parents and runs to me. He has a funny grin on his face when he comes over and says, What happened to your hair? I reach for my head as if something had happened, but of course, it is just my new short style and I say, Do you like it? Ronnie shakes his head yes and I say, Good, I did it for you. He giggles and runs back to his parents. I wait for Pops.

  He has a pair of shoes for me and when I put my feet in them they feel hard and uncomfortable as if they were made out of wood. We go looking for a ball. Mama picks one for herself and says, This’ll do, but Pops tells Mama it’s too heavy, pick a lighter ball. Pops loves to bowl. Pops loves to make the pins fly and he whistles the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony because it sounds like the collision of ball and pins.

  He picks a really light ball for me. He tells me to put my fingers in the holes and hang onto the ball. It fits. It’s just right and I run in my shoes to where Mama sits tying up her shoes that look funny on her feet, that make them look bigger and thinner. Pops goes up first and takes a practice ball. I have perfect form, he tells me. He takes those funny st
eps and crosses over himself and the ball flies in the air and lands halfway down with a shudder like thunder and the pins all go down. Perfect, he says. Mama goes next. Pops goes to get a beer. He turns to her and asks if she’d like a beer but she makes a face at him and starts to say something and then he’s gone.

  Mama takes a practice shot. It rolls fast and hard on the wooden floor and then the pins explode as she hits that magic spot where the pins have no choice but to all fall down. Then it’s my turn and I want to wait for Pops but Mama says she’ll help me so we walk together down the line. I roll my ball, which naturally goes in the gutter and wiggles slowly all the way down. Oh Scags, she says, touches my cheek. She hasn’t done that in a long time.

  Pops returns with two bottles of beer. Mama says, I told you I didn’t want one. They’re for me, he says and sets them in the little holes in the desk where he starts scoring, writing our names on the scoresheet as if we were really good at this.

  Pops says, Scags you’re first. Go pick up your ball and aim for the sweet spot. I hold the ball up to my nose and see the point the curve makes and take big steps, big steps, and get to the line, let go of the ball and I do this over and over. When it is my turn and every now and then I knock over five or six pins. Mama bowls about as good as Pops. He tells her to join a bowling league. He says, Bev, you could join a league and really improve your game. I don’t want you to think, Pops says, that you’re not good now, but it would be a little exercise and socializing simultaneously, a night with the ladies—Nate, Mama says, just bowl, will you?

  Pops gets up and I see him hold onto the chair for a moment and then he’s steady, gets his big black ball, holds his hand over the fan that dries it and he does his perfect motion. He gets a strike. Pops stands staring at the downed pins. He doesn’t move until Mama says, Nate, you got a strike. How do I score this? He walks away from us toward the bar and gets another beer.