The Trouble in Me (15 page)

“Believe me, I'll look,” he promised, pointing at me with a menacing glare.

He snatched open the door and walked away without closing it.

After a minute Gary slowly said, “Good job for now. But if he calls, you better pretend to be your father or I could be screwed.”

“Don't worry,” I said, showing off my cleverness. “We just recently got the phone. It's not listed in the book yet.”

Gary flopped down across a recliner. My chess set dropped to the floor and the pieces scattered. Gary reached down and picked up the white king and queen. He held one in each hand, then threw his arm over his eyes.

He looked tired to me, so I took a chance.

“Is this a bad time to talk about the puppy Alice was supposed to give me?” I asked.

“We'll talk about that later,” he replied. “Right now I'm in a crappy mood and I have to go down to Gus's and make some phone calls.”

“About what?” I asked.

“Come over here,” he said.

When I did he sat up and slapped me across the face so hard that I staggered toward the wall.

“I owed you that for the last ten questions,” he said, and turned his face away from me. “How many times am I going to have to teach you that?”

“A hundred thousand times,” I said in a hurt voice, then walked out the open door and around to my backyard. I stood there with my cheeks heating up as if I were in purgatory.

Maybe it's a good day to burn all my clothes,
I thought. I had already decided to steal new ones. But then I saw Tomi standing behind her fence. I knew she was waiting just for me.

“Talk to me,” she called out in that soft, sweet voice of hers. “You aren't going to let that bully run your life, are you? Come over here and light my cigarette. Come on. I'll blow smoke in your face and give you a kiss and you'll forget all about wanting to be his boyfriend. You'll be my boyfriend. There's a lot more fun on my side of the fence—I promise you that.”

I just lowered my head as if those words were a driving rainstorm. I walked blindly forward as she lashed out at me from behind.

“Well,” she said loudly, “if you want a little bit of heaven come and see me. But if you gotta go to hell with someone it might as well be him.”

That set me on fire.

 

WORDS OF FIRE

It was Saturday and I was rubbing my mother's sore legs. They were swollen from her standing all morning at the bank. She was a teller and had to wear high heels and now that she was expecting a baby her lower legs had filled with fluid. She was going to quit in a week or two but until then was enduring the swelling to make the extra money.

She was lying back on the couch with her legs up. I was happy to rub them and spend private time with her, but it was always a dangerous time because she could see deeply into the very heart of me and had a way of getting me to tell her what I wanted to hide. We were just too alike.

As soon as I started warming up the skin cream between my hands she said, “I've noticed some changes in you lately.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I'm getting bigger.” I held up my right arm and made a muscle. “See?”

She smiled, then continued. “Other changes, too,” she said more seriously.

“Like what?” I asked as I pressed on her calves and began to slowly massage them.

“Like you spend all your time lately with that Pagoda boy next door,” she replied.

“I'm lucky to have made a new friend,” I claimed. “With all our moving I lose friends faster than I can keep them.”

“But he seems so much older than you,” she remarked in a cautious tone. “His interests might be more
adult
.”

“He's only a few years older,” I said, honestly not certain how old Gary was. I only knew that he had failed some grades. I didn't know how much time he had spent in juvie, but he was probably three or four years older than me.

“You seem to follow him around a lot,” she said. “Is he bossy?”

“A little,” I conceded. “But that's just because he's older and used to being his own boss.”

“Does he listen to you?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“May I give you some advice?” she asked.

I really didn't want any. She was going to tell me to “respect myself because if I didn't then no one else would either.” She had been saying that most of my life. I was sort of a serial
follower
, so she knew how I operated. Only this time I was older and didn't want to just be a follower. I wanted to be him.

“With Gary I'm sort of the second-in-command,” I said proudly.

“The second-in-command is my favorite role,” she said in a warm voice. “It's like being a secret boss. The second-in-command can be a good influence and a clever leader by helping to point out the right path to the boss. Like me and your dad. He might be the boss because he's the man of the house, but I'm the leader. I'm the one that gives him good ideas and makes him think he thought of them himself.”

That was true. “But is that good enough for you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Because I know I'm the
real
leader and it's the same for you and Gary. He's the boss, but your job is to put ideas into his head and make him think they are his. That makes you the leader, and then the boss is just a lot of hot air. You see what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but it sounds so complicated. Can't I just follow him like a pal or right-hand man?”

She raised up on one elbow and looked at me with an exasperated expression. Then she lay back against the cushions again and closed her eyes. “You can do a lot better than to be his stooge,” she said, which hurt. “You are smarter than that. Stand up for yourself. Just remember, he's the fake boss but you are the real leader.”

She'd made that point so many times already I finally got exasperated. “Okay, I got it,” I said, and tried to change the subject before she suspected what was really on my mind. I didn't want to be the leader. For now I was the follower, but soon I would be just like him. I'd be his double through and through.

I kept working on my mother's legs until she curled up and fell asleep. Being the leader without being the boss must have been exhausting.

I loved her so much. I looked at her and put my cheek against her upturned hip. I wished I didn't make her life so uneasy, but with the new baby coming she'd worry less about me. I gave her a kiss, then hopped off the couch. Her breathing was labored. I wanted to respect myself like my mother wanted. But when I was alone I had to face who I was—who I really was—and I was so two-faced I couldn't really be alone because each face took turns hating the other. I never told her that. In the past I had told her things about myself that made her cry, and her tears were more unbearable than my own.

I left her side and went into my room. I closed the door and locked it. I felt exhausted with still being the follower. Maybe I was nothing more than Gary's puppy that lived in a shoebox at the foot of his bed. But if I wanted more than that I had to do more than settle for being his runt, as Alice had gleefully said. The runt insult haunted me because I feared it was true. But I had a cure for that.

I knew what I had to do next. I pulled open all my dresser drawers. Most of the clothes I had outgrown, but almost all of them seemed to belong to some other kid that I had rejected. I went through my drawers and scooped out all my socks and underwear and T-shirts. I piled them up on the bed. Then I opened my closet and tossed all my shoes and shirts and pants and a few jackets on top of the others. When I finished I only had one outfit—my shoplifting outfit.

I slipped down to the kitchen and got two plastic trash bags, then returned to my room and filled them equally with the clothes. I slung them over my shoulders and bent over from the weight of them as I marched down the hall. I looked like a runaway who intended never to return, but I was only going to the garage, where I hid them behind some sheets of plywood.

I took a deep breath and when I stepped out of the garage I spotted Gary in his backyard.

“Hey,” I called out, and waved that little Tomi King wave before I caught myself and lowered my hand.

“Sailor Jack!” he replied, and walked over to the fence. “You ready to meet some real guys?”

“I'm working at it,” I said, and smiled.

“Well, get your motor running because tonight is your night. I have a little initiation in mind that I think you'll like.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“Are you asking me a question?” he said, and cocked his fist back behind his head.

“No,” I quickly replied. “No questions. Only answers.”

He lowered his fist and cracked his knuckles. “See you at the clubhouse,” he said, and told me when to show up. “And don't be late.”

 

FAITH IN FLAMES

This next part is the hardest part to tell. Maybe because what I wanted didn't want me. I suppose all of us look at ourselves from time to time and wish we were bigger, stronger, meaner, tougher, and more vicious than the next guy. Being smart just isn't enough. I could be smart on my own at night alone in my room, but I wanted to be fearsome when I was out in the world walking bravely down dark streets or walking indifferently down those blindingly bright school hallways during class breaks. I wanted to be a man, and suspected I wasn't man enough—I wasn't a coward, but I wasn't feared either. Still, I had enough courage to do what I had planned.

First, I hauled my bags of clothes and a can of lighter fluid to the golf course. Gary had told me where there was a tear in the chain-link fence that was hidden by heavy vines. I set them down just inside the fence. I had plenty of time to burn them later. For now, I wanted to get my new clothes before anyone showed up and saw me looking like a kid.

Then I stole the beige Levi's at the Grant's department store. I had walked there in the heat of the afternoon and was so sweaty when I arrived I had to kill time strolling up and down the frozen-food section at the Winn-Dixie grocery store before I settled down and got busy.

I had worn a pair of my baggy khaki work pants to Grant's. I went directly to the Levi's section and selected two pairs that I thought might fit me. I draped them over my arm the way my mother would and carried them into the dressing room. The first pair fit so tight I could just barely get the zipper halfway up. My pinched-in stomach hung over the waistband.
Perfect,
I thought.
They'll stretch into shape.

I did a few quick deep-knee bends and then sucked in my gut and pulled the waistband together until the large shiny metal stud slipped into the heavily sewn buttonhole. I let out my stomach and the button and hole held tight and didn't pop off. I dragged the zipper the rest of the way up and the teeth didn't separate. I pulled my khakis over them. I returned the second pair to the display where I had found them. A salesgirl casually passed by but seemed to look right through me, as all girls did.

I shrugged. “No luck with the sizing,” I said to myself, and stiffly marched straight for the exit. I walked a couple blocks until I felt confident no one was following me and then I quickly peeled the khakis down over my legs and sneakers and threw them in a trash container behind a Burger King.

The shoes were harder to swipe. I stood by the display window and waited until there were no customers in the Thom McAn store. The salesman was a kid not much older than me. I was so new to this area of Fort Lauderdale that no one had ever seen me before. I went in and scanned the display shelf. When I spotted the white alligator pumps I requested my size. When he brought them out I tried them on. Although they fit nicely I said they were “too tight in the toe” and I'd need the next size up. The moment he went into the back storage room I grabbed the shoes. I left the box. I was out the front door in a flash and ran behind the store and cut through a scrubby field toward the back of a Holiday Inn. I put the shoes inside a grocery bag I found by a trash bin and kept walking briskly until I was far enough away from the store. I walked a few streets deep from the main highway, where there was new construction. Inside a half-built house I took the shoes out of the bag and scratched up the soles and heels over a rough concrete threshold in the garage. I grabbed a handful of sandy dirt and slopped it across the toes of the shoes. They were still stiff and smelled new, but they didn't look newly stolen. I put them back in the bag to be on the safe side. So far, it was all so much easier than I had imagined. My heart was pounding and my eyes were darting left and right, but I took a deep breath and kept going.

There was no way I was going to swipe a leather motorcycle jacket from a store. Besides, I wanted a used one that looked more like Gary's, which was all scratched up from taking a few hard spills on a Harley. I didn't want to look like a newly minted gang kid.

I walked down to a church secondhand clothing store called Faith Farm. My parents had bought our furniture there. It was nice—just out of style. The wooden building had been an old Florida hotel, and the donated clothes were sorted by rooms. I started going through a nasty pile of damp leather jackets. There was a lot of mildew on them and they smelled like dead cows in the humidity. The girls' jackets were the same style as the boys', only the sizes were different. I didn't care. I just needed something to fit into—and by the time Gary's friends arrived at the golf course it would be dark. It didn't take too long to find a guys' leather jacket that was a pretty roughed-up imitation of Gary's. It wasn't much money. I paid them the three bucks and went back to the golf course, where I could put on my new shoes.

I was going to burn my old clothes right away but then thought the smoke might attract someone who would call the fire department. So I took the bags and marched farther in until I found an asphalt path that hadn't fully crumbled into pieces from all the sun, roots, and vines. Gary had said he would meet me at an old clubhouse before it got dark, so I thought I would follow the path. Before too long I found the clubhouse. It was in ruins. Southern oaks had grown through the foundation and collapsed the walls. The moldy terra-cotta roofline sagged like a lower jaw of blackened teeth. Part of the building had been set on fire. Vines laced over the windows like spiderwebs covering flies. The inside walls were velvet curtains of golden-green mold. I ran my hand down the wall. It seemed to purr like a cat. It was a sensation that made me want to live there like a hermit or a monk waiting patiently for the fiery Apocalypse. Unlike my own room, it felt oddly comfortable, surrounded by what had been beautiful, then abandoned and left to rot. It reminded me of my sister's story about being born into perfection and then growing up only to find herself in decline. But she wouldn't be in decline over here. Nature always presses forward to regain its beauty and purity. I missed her at that moment. I wished she was with me so I could tell her that I now understood what she meant when one night she said to me, “The house is a bit of a monster, and slowly you belong to it and begin to function in it like living furniture that gets rearranged—you become another gear inside the machine of the house, or a hand puppet to your parents. You won't find freedom until you find yourself in a place that doesn't own you.” She was right about that. And now I felt like a stripped gear that had rolled out of the machine of the house and escaped to find my own special place.