KooKooLand (14 page)

“He's not a heathen, stupid. He's an agnostic.”

Her jaw went all slack. She didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

I gave her a smug look.

An agnostic, Jimmy had taught me, was a person who looked up in the sky and saw a big, fat question mark. A person who didn't know whether God was up there and wouldn't know until he saw God with his own two sober eyes. Until God showed up with beams of light shooting out of his keister and sat down and had a drink man-to-man and explained every screwed-up thing in the world. Like why some people got all the breaks and other people got the shaft. Why starving kids with giant bellies croaked while porky pip-squeaks slurped down sundaes. Why the workingman shoveled manure while the bosses were digging for caviar with a silver spoon. “If God exists, somebody oughta shoot the bastard.” That's how Jimmy had summed the whole thing up.

Tina jabbed me with her elbow.

People were now sliding off the rock-hard benches and kneeling on rock-hard stools.

I flinched as the scrape I'd gotten at Hank's pressed into the stool. I watched Tina close her eyes and begin to pray. I closed my eyes too. I was dying to unburden myself, to wipe the slate clean like an Etch A Sketch with a dirty picture I had once seen Virginia shake away when I came into the room.

Praying didn't feel strange. I took right to it.

Dear God, please don't let anyone find out what I did last night and forgive Poochie and Lambykins and Barbie and Chatty Cathy. I made them do it. I made them have S-E-X. Please, God, don't make me fry in hell. Let me go to heaven, if there is such a place and I hope there is, because I want to be where Susan is. I want to do everything just like her and go where she's going. And forgive my daddy for having those movies in the first place. He's just trying to make a buck and no one will give him a break. He'd tell you that himself if he was here, but he couldn't be here because he's got a starving horse and, well . . . he's not really sure if you exist, he sees a big question mark in the sky where other people just see clouds with maybe a clown's face in them. But he talks about you all the time, he talks about you even more than Tina talks about you, and Tina can talk your ear off, I'm sure you know that. Anyway, God, if you'd just give Daddy a big score he wouldn't have to sell those movies anymore and I wouldn't look at them or even think about them.

The lady in the apron bending over the table flashed into my head and I tried to get her the hell out of there.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it, I shouted to myself. God is going to fry your keister.

There, I did it. I said
keister
again.

God, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to say
keister
and I didn't mean to think about the lady.

I saw the lady again.

Get lost, get lost, lady, I told the lady in the apron.

The harder I tried to get her to go away, the more she kept bending over that table. Like a movie you watched over and over because you liked it so much. Only this movie I didn't like. I didn't.
I didn't.

But the truth wouldn't go away.

I
did
like it.

I felt Tina's elbow jab me again.

People were leaving the hard stools for the hard pews. I clambered back onto the pew, wondering if God had made Tina elbow me so I would stop thinking my bad thoughts.

I tried harder to pay attention to the priest. He was now speaking my language. He talked about Christ dying on the cross and pointed to a cross with a bloody man nailed to it.

Blood Feast
popped into my brain again. I saw the bloody woman hanging by her arms, and pushed her away.

It wasn't easy getting bad stuff out of your head. I could see that now. That must be why it was so hard to be a good Catholic and only a few people like Susan ever qualified.

The priest kept going on and on about the cross. He said God the father loved his son so much he had to make him suffer. He did this so people would understand sorrow.

“What did he say about Zorro?” Tina whispered.

“Sorrow, not Zorro, numbskull,” I shot back, happy that I understood something a priest said and that she didn't.

Then it was time to go eat the body of Christ and drink his blood.

I sat there watching the people go up to the altar. Only a few heathens like me didn't go.

When Tina came back she stuck her tongue out so I could see the melting cracker. Her mother told her to shut her mouth.

After that, men began passing around big silver plates. I expected the plates to have doughnuts on them. Tina had told me they passed out doughnuts after church to reward people for showing up. But these plates didn't have any refreshments on them. People were putting money on them. I started to panic. Hank's buck was stashed in my sock. Tina and I had planned to go to the Temple Market after church to buy candy.

I wondered if God really wanted me to put my dough on the plate.

I didn't want to. I wanted Chuckles.

My heart pounded as the plate got closer. I slipped my hand in my sock and grabbed Hank's buck in my fist, not knowing what I would do when the plate got to me.

Finally, the dinner plate was at our row.

The lady in the apron flashed through my head, how I had touched my Shame flashed through my head, what I had made my poor stuffed animals
do flashed through my head, and I thrust my fist out, ready to pay for my sins.

But before I could drop Hank's buck on the plate, Tina's mother reached across me and put an envelope on the plate.

“Don't worry. That's for all of us, dear,” she whispered to me in a kind voice. And she passed the plate down the row.

God had spared me. He had seen that I was sorry and had forgiven me and was rewarding me with Chuckles.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I sang it loud.

A
fter church I ate a cruller and a maple-frosted and then we went off to buy candy. Tina's mother gave Tina a list of what she wanted at the store and told us not to dillydally.

We pushed open the door to the Temple Market. Horrible Heddy, the woman who worked the cash register, looked up from her movie magazine and frowned.

“Hi, Heddy,” I said, trying to butter her up. “We've just been to church.”

“Pick out what you want and twenty-three skidoo,” snapped Horrible Heddy. “I got no time for shenanigans. I got paying customers in here.”

The store was empty except for us.

Tina grabbed a shopping cart with wobbly wheels and started rolling it through the cramped aisles, scanning items on her mother's list. We filled the cart with Devil Dogs, Ring Dings, Marshmallow Fluff, Skippy peanut butter, Bosco, Mrs. Paul's fish sticks, Cheetos, Cheez Whiz, Wonder Bread, and Swanson TV dinners in both the fried chicken and Salisbury steak varieties.

Horrible Heddy kept her peepers glued to the big round mirrors mounted on the ceiling, watching us like we were a couple of convicts just outta Sing Sing.

Finally, Tina and I headed for the candy display.

The Chuckles were all gone.

I shoved my hand way in the back and came up empty. Now I didn't know what to do. I picked up a Baby Ruth and put it back and picked up a PayDay and put it back and picked up the Baby Ruth again.

Horrible Heddy came up behind us and made sure no Baby Ruths had ended up with the PayDays.

“Something don't look right,” she said. Then she figured it out. “The Chuckles are missing.”

“You're all out,” I replied.

“That's a likely story,” she barked. “Empty your pockets.”

“I didn't swipe anything,” I insisted. “I didn't.”

“She didn't,” Tina backed me up. “Me neither.”

I started to feel all clammy. What if a Tootsie Roll had fallen in my pocket when I wasn't looking? What if Horrible Heddy found an old gumball in there that I had forgotten about?

“Empty your pockets, both of yous, or I'm callin' the cops,” she snapped.

She bent down so her face was right next to ours. Her breath smelled like she had just smoked a carton of Kool menthols while sucking on a Vick's cherry cough drop.

Tina quickly dug into her pockets. She pulled out the crumpled shopping list, the money her mother had given her, and the necklace she called rosary beads.

“See, I don't got nuttin',” said Tina.

Horrible Heddy turned away from Tina and zeroed in on me.

“Now you,” she said. “What're ya waitin' for, Christmas?”

“No. I won't,” I blurted out.

Tina looked like she was about to keel over.

“I didn't swipe anything,” I repeated.

“We'll see about that, Little Miss Liar,” Horrible Heddy shot back. She grabbed the phone and made like she was about to dial the fuzz.

I felt my lower lip quivering and bit it to get it to stop. I didn't want to bawl. I wanted to strangle her with my meat hooks. I wanted to whack her with a Swanson Salisbury steak.

But instead I turned my pockets inside out.

There was nothing in there. Not a frickin' thing. Not even Hank's buck. I had stashed it back in my sock in case I got my pocket picked at church like had happened to Shirley once at the racetrack.

Horrible Heddy patted me down. I stood there with my linty pockets hanging out vowing to return to the Temple Market one day when I was a world-famous writer/stewardess/lady doctor. I would show Horrible Heddy I wasn't a project kid anymore. She'd be so surprised she'd have a heart attack right then and there and I'd have to save her life even though I hated her guts. Then she'd get down on her knees and thank me and beg me to take anything I wanted in the store—anything. To take the whole damn store.

And I'd tell her to take her crappy store and shove it up her keister.

She finally took her mitts off me.

“Hurry up and get what you're gonna get,” she said, looking unhappy that she hadn't found anything.

I grabbed the Baby Ruth
and
the 5th Avenue and a few Tootsie Rolls and
a couple of
Archie
comic books. I'd show her I had dough. I wasn't just some project kid without a pot to piss in.

“You got enough to pay for all that?” she asked, hanging over me.

She didn't think I could add two and two. But
she
was the one. Always adding things in her head and gypping you.

“I have enough,” I fired back. “I have a whole dollar from my father's friend Hank Piasecny who owns Hank's Sports Center in the North End. I'm best friends with his daughter, Susan.”

I could see Tina's face drop when I said somebody else was my best friend. I felt like a traitor, but I had to straighten Heddy the hell out.

“Don't lie,” she said. “Don't be a little liar. You probably stole that money.”

“I did not,” I insisted. “Hank Piasecny the millionaire gave it to me.” I choked back the sobs welling up in my throat again.

Tina backed me up. “It's true,” she said. “I seen his Cadillac parked right outside her house.”

“She doesn't live in a house, she lives in the projects,” said Horrible Heddy.

I started lying my head off and couldn't stop.

Hank Piasecny gave me money all the time. Hank Piasecny took me to Benson's Wild Animal Farm. Hank Piasecny bought me bunk beds for my birthday. Hank Piasecny was taking me to Disneyland. Oh yeah, and Hank Piasecny and his whole family were coming up to Maine with us to have their pictures taken in the winner's circle when our racehorse won.

“Well, that's a real whopper,” Heddy snorted. “People in the projects owning racehorses.”

“You wait. I'll bring you my picture in the winner's circle. You'll see. You wait.”

“I won't hold my breath,” she said.

“My Swansons are melting. My mother's gonna kill me,” Tina said. She began pushing the cart with the wobbly wheel toward the checkout counter. Horrible Heddy followed, giving her a little shove.

I wanted to put my candy back and tell Horrible Heddy I was never shopping in her Mickey Mouse establishment again. I wanted to tell her I was taking my frickin' business somewhere else. But there was no somewhere else. No other store I could walk to or even ride my bike to. The closest was out near the cemetery and Jimmy didn't let me go that far.

I suddenly remembered those dago gangsters in Revere. The ones Jimmy had said would pop off my teacher's kneecaps. I realized if I went home and told Jimmy all about Horrible Heddy, all about her making me empty my pockets
and calling me a little liar, and trying to gyp me by adding in her head, he would do something. Something really bad. He would take all my hurt and make it his 'cause we were family and nobody hurt one of us without hurting all of us. That was the Greek Code, something the dagos apparently believed in too.

The dagos would probably torch the joint 'cause that's what they did to get even. Plenty of times Jimmy had pointed out blackened buildings in Revere where somebody had tried to gyp a dago and had been taught a goddamn lesson.

I pictured the Temple Market bursting into flames. I pictured Heddy's lacquered hair lit up like a Roman candle. I pictured all the Baby Ruths melting and the
Richie Rich
comic books burning.

But then, where would I buy my candy?

Revenge was sweet, I heard Jimmy say once.

But candy was sweeter. So I kept my big mouth shut.

I laid my purchases out on the counter and Horrible Heddy added them up in her head.

“One dollar, missy,” she said.

I reached into my sock and took out the dollar that I had folded and folded and folded into a small square. Horrible Heddy cursed and unfolded and unfolded and unfolded the dollar.

It wouldn't lay flat in her cash register drawer.

It was my only sweet revenge.

S
ure enough, Jimmy got Victory Bound eating his oats again. The horse had just gotten depressed, Jimmy explained when he returned from Maine.