Living Up the Street (3 page)

I wanted to run for them as they left for their car, to explain that it was a mistake; that we also fell from the swings and the bars and slide and got hurt. I wanted to show the man my chin that broke open on the merry-go-round, the half-moon of pink scar. But they hurried away, sweaty from the morning sun, the man’s pants and shirt stained with dirt and the little girl’s limp dress smudged from her fall, and in some ways looking like us.

I returned to Rosie who was still collecting her seeds, and feeling bad but not knowing what to do, I got to my knees and asked if she wanted to play. I touched her hair, then her small shoulders, and called her name. She looked up at me, her face still wet from crying, and said, “Go away, Blackie.”

That summer my eyes became infected. My brother and I had had a contest to see how long we could stare into the table fan without looking away. I was there for an hour, my head propped up in my hands, pretending all along I was in a biplane and the earth far below was World War I France. (That summer we watched
Dialing-for-Dollars
, a morning program that featured many war movies. Together we sat in a rocker-turned-fighter plane and machine-gunned everyone to death, both the good and the bad.)

An hour in front of the fan, and the next morning I woke with my eyes caked with mucus and unable to open them. I screamed to my mother who was in the kitchen stirring oatmeal, and when she came to the bedroom she screamed louder than me and fainted, dropping to the floor like a bundle of laundry. My brother rushed into the room with my sister following behind him, and both of them screamed when they saw Mom moaning on the ground. Looking up, they screamed as my hands searched
the air, and flew to the living room. My mother woke with an
“Ay, Dios,”
bundled me in her arms, and carried me to the bathroom where she rinsed a hot wash cloth and rubbed it across my eyes, until the mucus softened and my lids fluttered open.

She screamed again because my eyes were not red but milky. She called the doctor who suggested an eye specialist, and that afternoon she took me to see the specialist with my eyes covered by a bandana. We were seen immediately. The nurse ushered us into a dimmed examining room where we were met by a doctor who lifted me into a chair whose motor whined until I was tilted far back. He pointed a small, chrome flashlight at each eye and with a Q-tip he tapped mucus from the corners of my eyes. With the lights back on, he squeezed eye drops between my spread lids, gave my mother instructions, and said it was important that I wear special sunglasses for the next three days. He fitted me with plastic smoke-colored glasses with paper earpieces.

“How’s that, young man?” he said, trying to be cheerful. “You’ll be just fine in a couple of days.” He patted my knee and gave me a candy.

While Mother paid the receptionist I looked around the room, from the ceiling to the pictures of ships in a rough sea. It was smoky through the glasses. When we left the air-conditioned office the heat of the afternoon overwhelmed me, and I wanted to take off the glasses to wipe my nose of sweat, but Mother said that the light would make me go blind. We drove home in silence, past the smoky church and the smoky furniture store. I looked at my mother and she was smoky. Our block was smoky as we turned into it. My brother and sister, who greeted me with laughter, were darker than we’d left them. My mother scolded them and told them to water the lawn while we went inside where I was given a bowl of ice cream. I took this treat to the front window and looked
out on a knot of smoky neighbor kids who were staring in silence. One of them asked if I was blind.

“No, Frostie,” I called through the screened window. “I can still see your
mocos
.”

That night I was pampered by Mother; Rick and Debra grew envious because I was served more ice cream, more this and that, and was allowed to stay up until nine-thirty to watch
Dobie Gillis
in my smoky sunglasses. I could hear my brother in bed trying to talk to me.

“I’m going to get you, Gary,” Rick said. I laughed especially loud at each funny scene, and when the program ended I said, “Boy, that was real good.”

When I was sent to bed, I took off my sunglasses carefully and fogged them with my breath, rubbing them clean with my T-shirt. I placed them on the bureau and climbed into my bunk bed, while Rick muttered threats because he felt that I was being spoiled.

The next day we were again warned by our mother, who worked until four candling eggs for Safeway, not to go outside the house until one or the police might arrest her. The neighbors should not know that we were being left alone.

“But, Gary, you have to stay inside. I don’t want you to go out in the sunlight.” At the door she reminded me with a shake of her finger, “You heard what the doctor said. You can go blind,
m’ijo
.”

I watched the morning movie in which John Wayne, injured in an attack on an aircraft carrier, had lost the ability to walk, but later, through courage and fortitude, he pulled himself out of bed, walked a few stiff steps, and collapsed just as the doctor and his girlfriend entered the room to witness his miracle comeback. I saw myself as John Wayne. Nearly blinded by a mean brother, I overcame my illness to become a fighter pilot who saves the world from the Japanese. I took a few Frankenstein steps across the living room, shouting that I was healed by the
Lord. My brother countered with “You’re not funny.” He got up and went to the garage with Debra where they hammered on boards they said were going to be a scooter.

At one o’clock Rick and Debra went outside to ride their bikes in front of the house as I sat at the window yearning to join them. They rode by slowly, then with great speed, as they made certain to turn to me and smile to show they were really getting a kick out of riding their bikes. They rode for a while, their brows sweaty and their cheeks reddening, before an ice cream truck jingled up the block. They pulled together from their pockets seven cents for a juice bar which they took turns licking slowly under a tree. Rick looked at the window where I sat with my sunglasses on, and, very exaggeratedly, called out, “Ummm, good!”

They came inside, cooled off with Kool-Aid, and watched a game show neither of them cared for. Bored, Debra turned off the TV and went to her room to play with her dolls while Rick disappeared into the garage, where the rap of the hammer started up again. I peeked out the kitchen door that led to the garage, but he warned me that if I came out he would tell Mom.

Minutes later he came back into the living room where I was drawing and asked if I wanted to go to the playground.

“But Mom will get mad,” I said.

“Ah, don’t worry,” he argued. “We’ll be back before four. She won’t know.”

Debra returned to the living room and stood by Rick. Reluctant at first, I gave in when I saw them walk down the street without looking back, and trotted after them while holding onto my sunglasses so they wouldn’t fall off.

At the playground I was a celebrity; the kids milled around me and asked if I was blind, did it hurt, would I have to wear the sunglasses forever? I played checkers and Candyland with Ronnie, happy that I was noticed by
so many. Even the coach asked how I was, touched my hair and tenderly called me “knucklehead.” This made Rick mad and when he said it was time to go home I told him it was only three-thirty and that Mom wouldn’t get home until after four. Upset, he left with Debra tagging along in his shadow, but turned around before he was out of sight and said that he was going to get me. I played with Ronnie and sucked on a juice bar the coach had bought me, but left in a scramble when I discovered it was close to four.

As I returned home, happy as a pup, Rick jumped out from under a neighbor’s hedge. “Now you’re gonna get it, punk.” His grin was mean and his eyes were narrowed like the Japanese I had seen on television that morning. Wrestling me to the ground, he scratched off my sunglasses, laughed a fake laugh, and ran away wearing them. Crying, and with my hands shading my brow, I rolled under the hedge Rick had jumped from because it was dark in there. The earth was cool and leaves stuck to my hair and T-shirt. I sat up Indian-style, squinting and calling for help, although no one came.

I tried to move but a branch stabbed my back and ripped through my shirt, so I sat under the hedge calling out now and then, thinking that it was only a matter of time before I would go blind. An old woman with a shopping cart passed, and I called to her that I was going blind. She stopped, looked inside the hedge, her glasses slipping down from the bridge of her nose, and said, “Dear, I know just how you feel. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I can hardly make out where things are without my glasses.” She turned away and continued down the street.

I started crying because I knew that when Mother discovered me under the hedge she would be mad. There would be no excuses. She would drag me home for a spanking while the neighbor kids watched.

Finally, about an hour later, I heard my mother’s voice calling my name. I heard the clip-clop of my mother’s sandals, her stern voice: “Where are you,
Chango
?”

“In the hedge, Mamma.”

She bent down with her hands on her knees and squinted into the greenery. I squinted back and begged her not to hit me. Squatting, she waddled into the hedge, grabbed my wrist roughly, and tugged until I was standing up with my hands over my eyes. She fixed the sunglasses on my face and asked me what the hell I was doing in there.

“I didn’t want to go blind. Rick took my sunglasses. They made me go to the playground,” I whimpered incoherently, spilling it all. Once home, Rick got a spanking and Mom was raising a belt to punish me when I pointed to my sunglasses and cried out that I might really go blind. She stopped, her lips pursed, and just wagged her finger at me and warned that I would get a double dose the next time I misbehaved.

From the bedroom I could hear Rick whimpering into his pillow, “You’re gonna get it, punk!”

One day the woman coach at the playground announced a crafts contest. The word went out in the morning when the kids gathered around her to hear what she had to say. Two kids sat in her lap while another played with her blond curls as she broke the contest into categories: Drawing, lanyard, clay, and macaroni. First place winners would receive baseball caps. We oohed and aahed. The second and third place winners would get certificates. We oohed and aahed again.

“Now, kids, it’s important to be original,” she said. Someone asked what “original” meant.

“You know, different.… You know, unique,” she answered, and emphasized the definition with her hands.

I thought about this, and the next day for crafts period I
came to the playground with a Frostie root beer bottle. At the picnic table under the tree I spray-painted it gold, let it dry in the sun, and after smearing it with glue rolled it into a pie tin of peat moss which shimmered a mystical gold. Pleased thus far, I then glued macaroni noodles that I had painted red to the neck of the bottle.

I worked in deep concentration as did the other kids, and when I finished I carried it very carefully to the game room where the coach sat on a stool behind a Dutch door thumbing through magazines. I looked up at her, smiling my happiness. She squinted and furrowed her brow when she saw my creation. “Ummm, interesting, Gary.” She took it and placed it on a shelf.

The next day I made an ashtray. I rolled clay into a ball, pressed it out into a circle, and then raised the edges with a spoon. I made four dents where the cigarettes would rest, sticking colored buttons on each side of the dents.

That afternoon I also attempted a lanyard, but my patience with “loop and tuck, loop and tuck” gave out and I threw it into the garbage can. “Damn thing,” I said under my breath as I walked to the game room to check out a four-square ball. I bounced it inordinately high in hopes of attracting the kids who were still working at their crafts under the tree. Few looked up and none left to join me; their dirty legs dangled motionless under the table.

At dinner that evening my sister and I described to our mother the excitement of the contest, each sure the other was out of the running.

“You should see my Frostie bottle,” I said to her as I ripped a tortilla and chewed loudly. “It’s beautiful—like gold.”

Debra described the toilet roll she had painted red and black with macaroni glued in a spiral like a barber’s pole.

“Mine’s the best, Mom!” Debra tore off a piece of tortilla and chewed louder than me, with her mouth open.

“Mom, I can see Debbie’s food,” I pointed with a fork.
Debra chewed even louder, mocking me with her eyes spread wide like a bug’s.

“OK, you kids, behave yourselves.” Mom cleared the table as we scooted outside to play.

The next day I made a drawing of a dragster on fire. I outlined the lean body carefully, deliberating on each feature from the spoked wheels to the roll bar, and then scribbled the flames a vicious red and black, all the while whining like a car turning a corner. Finished, I carried it stiffly, as if I were in a pageant, to the game room. I handed it proudly to the coach who asked what it was.

“A dragster. That’s the engine.” I pointed out the eighteen pipes that hung on the side. I showed her the driver who had been thrown from the car. He was dead.

That afternoon the coach announced a special contest in which we could do anything we pleased.

“But it must be a secret,” she said. All of the kids huddled in the shade because of the afternoon heat that rose above a hundred degrees. We listened quietly as she explained that we had to do it at home with our own materials and that we should be original. And again we asked what “original” meant, and again she explained, “You know, different.… You know, unique,” with her hands flashing out for definition.

Starry-eyed, my mind blazing with a seven-year-old’s idea of beauty, I ran home because I knew exactly what I intended to produce. From the garbage I pulled a Campbell’s soup can, ripped off the paper label, and in the garage painted it red with a stiff brush, the stifling heat wringing sweat from my face. I let the soup can dry in the sun, and that evening I glued rows of bottle caps that I had dug out with a spoon from a Coke machine: One row of Coca-Cola caps, then a row of Orange Crush, then one of Dr. Pepper, and so on. When I finished with this detail I packed dirt into the can, poked two pinto beans into it,
and watered them carefully so the bottle caps wouldn’t get wet and fall off.