Show and Prove (10 page)

P
erfect day for a bus trip. The kids are excited, singing the military ditties that Big Lou teaches them. It's a miracle that no parents have ever complained about them.

A ding dong, dong, dong, dong

A ding dong, dong, dong, dong

A ding dong

Your mama don't wear no drawers

A ding dong

I saw when she took them off

A ding dong

She threw them in the sky

A ding dong

Superman refused to fly

Although it's sometimes hard to find the right words, I'm having fun translating for Pedro. When Sara's twins begin to help me out, I take a verse.

A ding dong, dong, dong, dong

A ding dong, dong, dong, dong

A ding dong

Your mama don't wear no drawers

A ding dong

I saw when she took them off

A ding dong

She tossed them in a tree

A ding dong

Now all the squirrels got fleas

Oooooh!
Not to be outdone, Nike takes the next verse, and he's hamming it up like he's Steve Martin.

A ding dong, dong, dong, dong

A ding dong, dong, dong, dong

A ding dong

Your mama don't wear no drawers

A ding dong

I saw when she took them off

A ding dong

She tossed them on the floor

A ding dong

All the roaches moved next door

And now that Nike has everyone's attention, of course his kid has to steal the show. Stevie changes the words and speeds up the rhythm, and it goes from sounding like a camp song to a church revival.

Ding-dong dong ding-dong

Ding-dong dong ding-dong

Ding-dong dong ding-dong

A ding dong!

Your mama don't wear no drawers

Ding-dong

She took 'em off

Ding-dong

She hung 'em on the line

Ding-dong

The sun refused to shine

He's going so fast and dancing the fila. Just watching him is hilarious. Between Stevie's speed and my laughter, I can't keep up with the translations, but Pedro is cracking up anyway. As the twins scramble to translate between giggles, Stevie sucks in a huge breath and pushes out another verse.

Ding-dong dong ding-dong

Ding-dong dong ding-dong

Your mama don't wear no drawers

Ding-dong

She took 'em off

Ding-dong

She washed them in the sink

Ding-dong

Too bad they still stink

Stevie has the bus in an uproar.
Oh, I ain't never heard that one before!
I'm laughing so hard that my stomach hurts.

“OK, calm down,” says Big Lou, but he's grinning from ear to ear. I bet he teaches all his army buddies that one.

Nike puts his hand on Stevie's shoulder. “A'ight, that's enough. Let someone else get a chance. This ain't
SNL
or
The Shorty Rock Show.
”

He just can't share the spotlight. And neither can Stevie. That's why he aims the next verse at Nike.

Ding-dong dong ding-dong

A ding dong!

Your mama don't wear no drawers

Ding-dong

She took 'em off

Ding-dong

She put them in the bed

Ding-dong

Next day your pops was dead

I jump to my feet. I should've seen this coming.

Nike pounces on Stevie. “You little…”

“Get off me!” Stevie hollers. “I'ma call the Bureau of Child Welfare on you.”

I try to peel Nike's fingers off Stevie's arm, but he won't let go. “You're gonna get docked, B.” That makes Nike loosen his grip. Thank God the driver is turning into the parking lot. “C'mon now. He's just messin' with you.”

“Nah, man, that little punk shouldn't be talkin' about people's parents.” Under his breath, he tells Stevie, “Keep testing me, and you won't be calling child welfare. They gonna be callin' Porto Coeli to plan ya funeral, 'cause I'ma kill you!”

“Step off !” Stevie says, and Nike lunges for him.

From the front of the bus, Cookie yells, “Yo, Smiles, could you put your homeboy in check, puh-leeease?”

Nike is about to yell back at her when I poke him in the side. “Yo, Sara's watching.” He huffs and folds his arms across his chest. The driver stops the bus, so I say, “Help me carry out the food.” We head to the back of the bus, where we stacked the three large cardboard boxes of packaged lunches. I notice that the crew chief and counselors of the Rookies are leading them toward the picnic tables, while the Famers are heading straight for the pool, chomping on their sandwiches and sipping their juice as they cross the lot. The Champs always want to copy the older kids, and I say let them unless there's a good reason not to.

Everything's copacetic until Cookie jumps bad after Nike and I get off the bus. When we tear open the boxes and start to hand out lunches to the kids as they step off the bus, she yells, “Why're you doing that?” Cookie rushes over to us. “Wait until we find a place to eat in the park as a group.”

“It's lunchtime already,” I say. “The kids are going to start acting out if they don't eat.” As senior counselor, she should know these things. Cookie reaches for the sandwich I'm handing to one of Sara's twins. I yank it away. Next thing I know, she's scaling my side like I'm a cliff and she's Indiana Jones. Nike laughs as I swat at Cookie with one hand and play keep-away with the sandwich in the other. When she steps on my foot, Nike instigates. “Yo, homey, I know you're not gonna let that girl stomp all over your shell-toes.”

Sometimes I wish Nike would just mind his business. There are more important things than a pair of sneakers, but I
can't
let Cookie trample my dogs. “Step off,” I warn her.

“Make me.”

“Ooh!” yells Nike.

Big Lou comes over. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Cookie won't let me feed the kids.”

“Don't exaggerate.”

“You're the one getting all melodramatic.”

“I'm not being melodramatic. I'm being right.”

I hiss at her.

“Don't
pssst
me,” says Cookie, rolling her eyes and twisting her head.

I imitate her. “Medusa!”

“How old are you guys?” Big Lou says. “You're worse than the kids sometimes.”

“This is a big pool, and we need to keep the group intact,” says Cookie. “We should find a place in the park and have lunch together. Then when we finish lunch, we go into the pool together. This way when the time comes to go back home, we're not looking for counselors and kids scattered all over the place.”

“One,” I say, “the kids are hungry. Two, by the time we find a place, have lunch, and round everybody up to go into the pool together, we might as well get back on the bus and—”

“There you go exaggerating again!” interrupts Cookie. “They don't allow food in the pool, so they have to eat first anyway. And really they should wait at least a half hour before going in the water.”

“That's an old wives' tale.” Humor wins me points when I debate, so I break out the patois. “And ya damn rude!” I turn back to Big Lou, who's trying not to laugh. “If fish deh a river bottom an tell yu seh alligator have gum boil, believe him! Why can't we do like at any city pool? Choose a place and time for everyone to meet, and let everybody do their thing. You want to eat now? Go eat. If you want to skip lunch and go into the pool now and buy something inside later—”

“That food in there is freakin' expensive!” Cookie yells. “What we got free lunch for?”

“Yo, stop cutting me off!” A lot of these kids get money from their parents for the bus trip. After four days of bologna and peanut butter and jelly, they
want
to splurge on a hot dog or hamburger. That's part of what makes the bus trip a different kind of fun. “What do we pay counselors for if we—”

“The both of you shut up!” Big Lou scans the parking lot. “I don't see why we can't just say we'll meet at that tree over—” And then his eyes land on Nike trying to rap to Sara while Stevie is climbing the grille of somebody's Thunderbird. The second his thighs hit the hot metal of the hood, he leaps off of the car, yelling in pain. Then Stevie punches the hood ornament as if the car burned him on purpose. “Nike, look at what your kid is doing!” Big Lou yells. “All we need is for the owner to come out and see that.” Then he puts his whistle in his mouth and blows it. “Champs, here's the plan. We're meeting by this tree right now for fifteen minutes to have lunch.”

Counselors and kids groan and suck their teeth. “Why do we have to wait?” asks one kid. “We want to go into the pool now. No fair the Famers get to go in and we have to stay out here with the Rookies like a bunch of babies!”

“The sooner y'all do as I say, the sooner we have lunch, the sooner we go inside,” says Big Lou. “You don't wanna eat, don't eat.”

Cookie gives me a smug look and then finally snatches that sandwich out of my hand. “Counselors, let's motivate!” She tosses it back into the box, picks it up, and starts walking toward the meeting point. “If you do want lunch, follow me.” She says to Sara, “Could you get the other box, please?”

“Sure.”

And, of course, Nike picks up the third box and follows her.

To hell with all these freakin' Ricans.

“S
trike two, Willie,” Barbara says before throwing me out of her office. If they want me to do a good job, why they give me the worst kid in the camp? Shorty Rock makes Dennis the Menace seem like Opie Taylor, I swear.

“Barb, just assign me another kid,” I beg. “How hard can that be?”

“You need Stevie as much as he needs you.”

“What's that s'posed to mean?”

“Think about it.”

They don't pay me minimum wage to think. At the rate I'm going, they won't be paying me at all. I'll be working for free.

After some more blasé, blasé, I storm out of Barbara's office and run into Sara. She's changed out of her bathing suit and shorts back into her long-sleeved blouse and ankle-length skirt. She seems embarrassed that I caught her in her Pentecostal clothes.

“Hi, Sara.”

“Hey.”

“That's a nice top.” I give her a big grin to let her know her secret's safe with me. I like my biddies a little sneaky.

“Thanks.” Sara drops her eyes for a second and then starts to smile.

“You clocked out yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. I'll walk you.”
Please say
OK.

“OK.”

We walk out of the church and head down 138th Street. I figure Cookie's going to tell her anyway, so I give Sara my side of what happened in Barb's office. I prepare to defend myself, but Sara just listens without a hint of judgment on her pretty face. I keep venting, feeling better just to get it off my chest. “I feel set up,” I say. “Like Barb, Lou, and everybody want me to mess up so they can just fire me.”

“What's the point of that?”

“I don't know. To torture me, I guess.” Sara laughs. “You tell me why, then, 'cause I ain't got no idea.”

“I don't know how you do it,” Sara says, shaking her head. “Stevie
is
a handful.”

“He's a pain, right?” Barb, Big Lou, and Smiles, too, be actin' like I'm the problem, but Sara's a sweetheart, and even she can see Shorty Rock's demon ways. “That kid could drive Mister Rogers to drink.”

Sara laughs. We pause at the corner to wait for the light, and she looks directly at me with those caramel eyes.

“Maybe Stevie's such a tough kid because he needs a male role model who can handle him.”

“Word.” It crosses my mind that maybe Sara's just saying all this to be nice, but I don't care. She wants to make me feel better. After the day I had, that's exactly what I need. We reach her building. “So you're just going to go upstairs and…stay there?”

“As you've probably figured out, my parents are kind of strict. You wouldn't believe what I had to go through in order for them to let me get this summer job. Except to go to work and run errands…” Then Sara's face glows. “I have to do some grocery shopping tomorrow. What was the store that you said that might have the ingredients I need?”

“The A&P.”

She looks back in the direction of 138th Street, where the supermarket is located. “One o'clock?” Then Sara smiles at me.

“Most definitely.”

“Take care.” Sara opens the door and steps into the foyer. She disappears inside, and while I'm bummed to see her go, at least I don't have to wait until Monday to see her again.