Little Chicago (8 page)

There is a black hardhat on the seat. I put it on and imagine myself playing dodgeball. I break all the rules and charge Steve Degerald and Evan Keefler with my head. They slam up against the bleachers and I can hear their ribs crack. I can almost feel their bones breaking in my teeth.

From the cab of the bulldozer I can see into the half-made house. It's all skinny wood and chicken wire. I think about how houses have bones too.

I wonder when they put the walls in cause the walls are skin.

I wonder how electricity works cause electricity's like veins. Trying to figure this out makes me sleepy.

My hair is soaked and so are the bottoms of my jeans.

I can smell my body. It's like meat with spices.

I doubt that this is a pleasant experience to inhale.

Ma says I don't need to start using deodorant yet but I think I do.

The bulldozer windshield is getting all steamy and I write a letter with my finger.

Boy,

Where are you? I miss you.

Girl

I see Al Johnson in jail.

They shave his head and beat him with sticks.

He falls to his knees and begs for mercy.

And then a guard with a gold tooth urinates on his skull.

My breath steams over the words on the windshield and my letter is gone.

I walk the rest of the way home.

You always hear about gang activity on this side of town. The Vicelords and the Latin Kings.

Watch out for the gangs, Blacky, Ma says sometimes. I guess Chicago isn't big enough for them.

You can tell who they are cause they cock their hats funny.

Eric Duggan said that once he was at Aladdin's Castle in the mall and a Vicelord walked up to him and made him remove his Cubs hat.

If they come after me I will hide in a dumpster.

I realize that I am still wearing the hardhat but I don't feel guilty and I keep it on.

The rain dies a little but not much.

I think about cutting through Hamil Woods. I could rest in the dugout at the baseball field.

But you never know when the Smudge Man will come out of his hole.

I imagine meeting him.

Hello, Smudge Man, I say, nice to finally meet you.

He is gentle and scary at the same time.

He plays his violin and I get hypnotized.

Then he takes me down into his hole and eats my brain with a spoon.

7

By the time I get home, the rain has stopped and the backyard looks like rubber.

Cheedle is under the swing set with his typewriter. He's sitting on newspapers and wearing a red football helmet. The helmet makes his head look huge.

Hey, I say.

He says, Hey.

What are you doing out here?

Ma's talking to someone in the kitchen.

Who is it? I ask.

Some woman with frizzy hair.

What's with the football helmet? I ask.

He says, It's for concentration. Distracting forces see it and it renders them useless.

I have no idea what he just said.

I say, Where'd you get it?

I found it in the basement, he says. I would hypothesize that it belonged to our dad.

Oh, I say.

The chin strap makes his face look smashed.

It's a day for interesting headgear, he says, pointing to my hardhat.

I found it, I say.

He doesn't ask where.

I don't think he's at all interested in my life.

Sometimes I feel like I'm his little brother and I should be following him around.

We are quiet and he types for a minute.

Did you see the rainbow? Cheedle asks.

No, I say, I missed it.

It was strange, he says, still typing. The rain was coming down in a veritable deluge and then it suddenly stopped and there was a full rainbow.

Huh, I say. What's a reversible luge?

Ver
itable
del
uge. An authentic downpour.

Oh, I say.

Cheedle says, The Indians believed rainbows meant good things to come.

Then he picks at his ear through a hole in the football helmet.

How's the novel coming? I ask.

I'm having a good session, he says. Glen the Bear Boy is leading me on an interesting journey. As we've learned in Techniques in Fiction Writing, keeping your protagonist active is perhaps the novelist's greatest challenge.

He stops typing.

By the way, Cheedle says, thanks for the kissing lesson. I told Anna Beth Coles about it today in Chaos and Creativity and she expressed interest in having a lesson as well. She's eleven like you and she's already well into puberty. I think she would benefit from your wisdom on such matters. She said she'd be happy to provide remuneration.

What's remuneration? I ask.

Re
mun
eration, he says. A fee for your services.

Oh, I say.

I think about getting a fee for my services and it strikes me that this would be a form of prostitution.

Eric Duggan told me that prostitutes don't wear any underwear and make a thousand dollars an hour. He got this information from a late-night HBO special.

What did you think of
Anna Karenina
? Cheedle asks.

I couldn't read it, I say. I kept getting stuck on the names.

He says, Tolstoy takes some getting used to.

He adjusts the chin strap and cleans his thumbnail.

Anna Karenina winds up jumping in front of a train, he adds. One of the most tragic moments in Russian literature.

Why does she do that? I say.

I don't know, Cheedle says. I guess she'd had enough.

I see myself jumping in front of one of the Metra Rock Island trains. I can hear the whistle screaming as it pulls into Union Station. But instead of jumping I get scared and sit down on the platform.

I say, The Sherpas believed that the Indominable Snowman was a time traveler.

Cheedle watches me for a moment and says, It's
abominable.

Oh, I say. Isn't that what I said?

You said
indominable.
Indominable's not a word. But that's a valuable piece of information. Thank you.

You're welcome, I say, and I just stay there. I put my hand on the swing set. The rust feels cold and prickly.

Do you think he has anything to do with the Smudge Man? I ask.

Cheedle says, Perhaps, and starts typing again.

When I walk into the house Ma and the Ham Lady are talking to each other at the kitchen table.

When they see me nobody says anything for a moment.

You can hear the lights humming over the table.

After a minute Ma says, Why are you so wet, Blacky? Didn't you get the bus home?

I missed it, I say.

You missed it.

Bathroom emergency.

Oh, she says. Well, walking is good exercise.

I look out the window toward the woods. Someone has spray-painted
FUCK
on the dead Ford Taurus.

Ma fidgets a little and says, Do you remember Ms. Wolf, Blacky?

The Ham Lady says, Hello, Blacky.

Hello, I say.

Ma is so tired she can hardly keep her body up. Her hair is stringy and matted. It stops looking red when it gets like that. I almost want to put a napkin over it.

Busy day at school? the Ham Lady asks.

Yes, I say. Pretty busy.

How are your feet doing? she asks.

Better, I say.

They're stinging even as I'm standing there.

The Ham Lady is playing with that blue squeeze ball again. I imagine that she takes this item everywhere. I see her fiddling with it on a plane. I see her on a horse with it, too. The horse bucks her into a lake with sharks and piranhas but she hangs on to the ball.

I want them to ask me about my hardhat but they won't. I'm holding it out in front of me and trying to be obvious.

Ma looks at the Ham Lady with a very pained expression on her face. For a second it gets so quiet you can hear the refrigerator and the lights humming. It's like they're doing a duet.

Ma says, Did you get your makeup assignments?

Yes, I say.

She's doing this thing where she's not looking at me. It's like she's been replaced by a machine person. If I opened her up I'd probably find vacuum cleaner parts.

The Ham Lady turns to me and then she glances at Ma and smiles. Her teeth seem too small for her mouth.

Is Shay home? I ask.

She's in her room, Ma says.

Okay, I say.

We'll just be a few more minutes, Blacky, the Ham Lady says, still smiling.

Go dry your head, Ma says, but she's still not looking at me.

She's making a guess.

She's looking at the toaster like it's going to say something back.

I put my hardhat under my bed and go into Shay's room.

Shay is listening to music that sounds like cars on a speedway.

Her headphones make her look like she's part UFO. Her hair is so red you can close your eyes and still see it.

The thing about Shay is that she disappears a lot.

It's like living with an escape artist.

She sneaks in and out of her window like a jewel thief. If you look behind her blue curtains you can see how the screen's bent. You can also see many cigarette butts.

A lot of her clothes are ripped cause of all the criminal activity. Once I saw her nipple poking through a hole in her shirt.

Sometimes Ma pleads with Shay to wear a bra. She'll say, C'mon, Shay, wear a bra. What kind of image are you trying to project?

Shay's seventeen and last year she had a baby that came out dead. She got sick shortly after this and it was discovered that she had hepatitis.

Ma borrowed some money from her brother Jack and sent Shay to this place in Michigan called Open Grove Recovery Facility. Shay said it was full of rich kids who were junkies and prostitutes.

When we drove up to visit her there was a snowstorm and the maple trees were so white Ma said she was going to write a poem about them, but she never did.

We got to sit in this room with Shay and there was a foos-ball table and I played against an African American boy with a burnt face while Shay and Ma sat in chairs and stared at each other.

The boy with the burnt face beat me twelve games in a row. Some of his face was brown but most of it was pink and rubbery-looking. I think I had a hard time concentrating cause of this fact.

After he beat me twelve times he played with one hand and beat me twice more.

He was an excellent foosball player. I imagine he could be a professional.

When we said goodbye Shay cried so hard snots came out of her nose.

She kept saying she was going to get clean.

I'm gonna get clean, Ma, I promise, she said. I promise I'll get clean, please let me come home!

She begged like an animal but Ma made her stay at Open Grove Recovery Facility and cried the whole drive back.

Shay stayed there for a month and when she finally came home she seemed sad and fragile.

One night I asked her about the dead baby.

She said that she dreams about it sometimes and its name is Bruce.

Her boyfriend at the time didn't even know about Bruce the Dead Baby. His name is Dennis Parker and he's in the Marines now.

Ma thought that after being at Open Grove Shay would change her ways but she hasn't.

Ma says, What are we gonna do with Shay?

Ma says, I wasted all my brother's money.

Now Shay's got more than one boyfriend.

I saw this guy in her room with her once. His name is Speed and he's got a tattoo of a dragon on his back. He's so pale the first time I saw him I thought he was a vampire.

Over the summer Shay had a job at Sizzler but she got caught smoking marijuana in the employee bathroom. Now she doesn't work and it creates a lot of tension between her and Ma.

Hey, I say, but she doesn't hear me. Her room smells like cigarettes and air freshener.

I come up over her shoulder. Her hands are shaking so bad it's like they're someone else's hands.

I poke her in the back.

Shay turns and takes her headphones off.

A woman is singing to the speedway song now. She sounds like she's having a multiple orgasm. Eric Duggan told me about multiple orgasms. He said that women in China have them all the time.

Showtime exclusive, he said. You gotta get that channel, Blacky.

Hey, I say to Shay.

She says, Hey.

I just stand there.

I'm wondering if she can see through me to the other side of her room where her posters are. There's this one of a horse with a human leg and I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean.

What's up? she says.

Nothing, I say.

You okay?

Yes.

There's something about Shay's eyes. Her pupils are so black it's like some aliens took her up in a spaceship and made an exchange.

They used to be a lot bluer.

What are you doing? I ask.

Nothin, she says. Ponderin shit.

What are you pondering?

I don't know, she says. Takin a trip. Movin to Chicago. The usual.

Oh, I say.

Oh, she says, mocking me.

Are you really gonna move to Chicago? I ask.

I'm thinkin about it. Betty says there are these cheap apartments in Logan Square and that her brother would get the lease for us.

I say, Can I go with?

No.

Why not?

Cause you're too young, she says. You gotta finish school.

Then I take out the tongue and show it to her.

What's that? she asks.

It's a tongue, I say.

She grabs it and looks at it.

Weird, she says.

It's from the Dave the See-Through Fake Human. I stole it in Life Science. He's got other parts too. I'm gonna get a kidney next time.

It looks like a dildo, Shay says, and hands it back.

Her comment makes me lose my balance and I do a full circle and wind up facing her again.

What are you gonna do with it? she asks.

Put it in my box, I say.

She looks at me like I said something stupid.