M
Y
arms were tired. The sweat was running down my forehead and into my eyes, which were beginning to burn. I brushed at them with the back of my boxing glove and turned, facing the teacher.
His voice was harsh and he, too, was covered with sweat. “Keep your left up, Danny. And snap it. Sharp! Don’t swing it like a
ballet-dancer
. Snap, from the shoulders. Fast! See, like this.” He turned toward the punching bag and snapped his left at it. His hand moved so quickly it seemed like a blur. The bag rocked crazily against the board. He turned back to me. “Now, snap it at me—fast!”
I put my hands up again and moved warily around him. This had been going on for two weeks now and I had learned enough to be careful with him. He was a rough teacher and if I made a mistake I usually paid for it—with a poke in the jaw.
He circled with me, his gloves moving slightly. I feinted with my right hand. For a split second I noticed his eyes following it, and I snapped my left into his face just as I had been told.
His head jerked back with the punch, and when it came forward again, there was a red bruise marking his cheekbone. He straightened up and dropped his hands.
“Okay, kid,” he said ruefully, “that’s enough for the day. You learn fast.”
I let my breath out gratefully. I was tired. I pulled at the laces on the gloves with my teeth.
“School’s over next week, Danny.” Mr. Gottkin was looking at me thoughtfully.
I managed to get one glove off. “I know,” I answered.
“Goin’ to camp for the summer?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nope. I’m gonna help my dad out in the store.”
“I got a job for the summer as a sports director at a hotel in the Catskills,” he said. “I can get you a bus-boy’s job if you want. I’d like to keep these lessons up.”
“Me too, Mr. Gottkin”—I looked down at the gloves hesitantly—“but I don’t know whether Pop’ll let me.”
He sat down on the couch. His eyes swept over me. “How old are yuh, Danny?”
“Thirteen,” I answered. “Made my Bar Mitzvah this month.”
He looked surprised. “That all?” he said in a disappointed voice. “I thought you were older. You look older. You’re bigger than most fifteen-year-old kids.”
“I’ll ask Papa, though,” I said quickly. “Maybe he’ll let me go with you.”
Gottkin smiled. “Yeah, kid. Do that. Maybe he will.”
I slipped Rexie a scrap of meat under the table and looked over at Papa. He seemed in a good mood.
Papa,” I said hesitantly.
He looked at me. “Yes?”
“My gym teacher’s got a job in the country at a hotel,” I said hurriedly. “And he says he can get me on as a bus-boy if I want to go.”
Papa continued to stir his tea while I watched him. “You told Mamma about this yet?” he asked.
Mamma came in from the kitchen just then. She looked at me. “Told me what?”
I repeated what I had told Papa.
“And what did you tell him?” she asked me.
“I told him I was going to help Papa out in the store, but he said to ask anyway.”
She looked at Papa for a moment, then turned back to me. “You can’t go,” she said with finality. She picked up some dishes and started back to the kitchen.
I was disappointed even though she had answered as I had expected. I looked down at the table.
Papa called her back. “Mary,” he said softly, “such a bad idea, it’s not.”
She turned to him. “It was decided already that he’s going into the store this summer and that’s where he is going. I’m not going to let him go away for the whole summer by himself. He’s still a baby yet.”
Papa sipped at his tea slowly. “Such a baby he can’t be if he’s coming into the store. You know the neighbourhood. Besides, a summer in the country will do him good.” He turned back to me. “Is it a good hotel?”
“I don’t know, Papa,” I said hopefully. “I didn’t ask him.”
“Get for me all the facts, Danny,” he said, “and then your Mamma and me, we’ll decide.”
I was sitting on the stoop when they came out of the house. Papa stopped in front of me.
“We’re going to the Utica to the movies with Mr. and Mrs. Conlon,” he said. “Now, remember to go to bed by nine o’clock.”
“I will, Papa,” I promised. I didn’t want to do anything that might queer my chances of going to the country with Mr. Gottkin.
Papa walked across the driveway and rang the Conlons’ bell. Mimi came out on the stoop with her coat on.
I looked at her questioningly. “You going too?” I asked. I really didn’t care much. We hadn’t been on such good terms since the Bar Mitzvah party. She had wanted me to tell her what Marge and I did in the furnace-room and I had told her to find out from her friend if she wanted to know so much.
“Marge and I are going,” she said importantly. “Papa said I could.” She walked down the steps haughtily.
The Conlons came out on their stoop. Marge wasn’t with them.
Mimi asked: “Isn’t Marjorie Ann coming, Mrs. Conlon?”
“No, Mimi,” Mrs. Conlon answered. “She was tired, so she’s going to bed early.”
“Maybe you better stay home too, Mimi,” Mamma said doubtfully.
“But you said I could go.” Mimi’s voice was pleading.
“Let her come, Mary,” Papa said. “We promised her. We’ll be home by eleven.”
I watched them all get into Papa’s car. It was a quarter to eight. I felt like a cigarette. I got up and went to a hall closet, where I found a crumpled pack of Luckies in one of Papa’s jackets. Then I went back out on the stoop and sat down and lit the cigarette.
The street was quiet. I could hear the breeze rustling the leaves on the young trees. I leaned my head against the cool bricks and closed my eyes. I liked the feel of them against my cheek. I liked everything about my house.
“Is that you, Danny?” It was Marge’s voice.
I opened my eyes. She was standing on her stoop. “Yeah,” I
answered
.
“You’re smoking!” she said incredulously.
“So?” I dragged on the cigarette defiantly. “I thought your mother said you went to bed.”
She came over to my stoop and stood at the bottom of the steps. Her face shone white in the light of the street lamps. “I didn’t feel like going,” she said.
I took a last drag on the butt and threw it away, stood up and stretched. “I guess I’ll turn in,” I said.
“Do you have to?” she asked.
I looked down at her. There was an intent expression on her face. “Nope,” I said shortly, “but I might as well. There’s nothin’ doin’ around here.”
“We can sit out and talk,” she said quickly.
The way she said that made me curious. “About what?” I asked.
“Things,” she answered vaguely. “There’s lots of things we can talk about.”
A peculiar excitement began to fill me. I sat down on the steps again. “Okay,” I said, deliberately casual. “So we’ll talk.”
She sat down on the steps beneath me. She was wearing a smock that tied on the side. As she turned to look up at me, it parted slightly and I could see the shadow fall between her breasts. She smiled.
“What are you smiling at?” I asked, instantly defiant.
She tossed her head. “You know why I stayed home?” she countered.
“No.”
“Because I knew Mimi was going.”
“I thought you liked Mimi,” I said with surprise.
“I do,” she said earnestly, “but I knew if Mimi went you’d be home, so I didn’t go.” She looked up at me mysteriously.
The excitement was surging in me again. I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet. I felt her hand touch my knee and I jumped. “Don’t do that!” I snapped, pulling my leg away.
Her eyes were round and innocent. “Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “It gives me the shivers.”
She laughed softly. “Then you do like it. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”
I didn’t like the way she stared at me. “I’m going in now,” I said, getting to my feet.
She stood up, laughing. “You’re afraid to stay out here with me!”
“I am not,” I retorted hotly. “I promised my father I would go to bed early.”
Her hand made a quick movement and caught mine. I pulled away from her. “Cut it!” I snapped.
“Now I know you’re afraid!” she taunted. “Otherwise you’d stay out. It’s still early.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll stay out until nine.”
“You’re funny, Danny,” she said in a puzzled voice. “You’re not like the other boys.”
I dragged at the cigarette. “How?” I asked.
“You never try anything.”
I looked down at the butt in my hand. “Why should I?”
“All the other boys do,” she said matter-of-factly, “even my brother, Fred.”
I didn’t speak. I dragged on the cigarette. The smoke burned into my lungs. I coughed and threw it away. She was still staring at me. “What’re you looking at?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“I’m going to get a drink of water,” I said quickly. I hurried into the house and through the darkened rooms into the kitchen. I turned on the water, filled a tumbler, and drank it thirstily.
“Aren’t you going to give me any?” she said over my shoulder.
I turned around. She was standing behind me. I hadn’t heard her follow me. “Sure,” I said. I filled the glass again.
She held it in her hands for a moment, then put it back on the sink untouched. She put her hands on my face. They were cold from the tumbler.
I stood there woodenly, my body stiff and unmoving. Then her mouth was against mine. She was bending me back, across the sink. I tried to push her away, but I was off balance.
I gripped her shoulders tightly and heard her gasp in pain. I squeezed harder and she cried out again. I straightened up. She was standing in front of me, her eyes swimming in pain. I laughed. I was stronger than she. I squeezed her shoulders again.
She grimaced and her hands caught wildly at mine. Her lips were against my ear. “Don’t fight with me, Danny. I like you. And I can tell you like me!”
I pushed her away violently. She half stumbled back a few steps, then stood looking at me. Her eyes were glowing, almost luminously,
like a cat’s eyes in the dark, and her chest was heaving from exertion. I knew it then as I watched her: she was right.
The noise of a car turning up the block came to our ears. My voice was a frightened sound in the night. “They’re coming back! You better get out of here!”
She laughed and took a step toward me. Alarmed by a fear I didn’t understand, I bolted for the stairway and stood nervously on the steps, listening to her voice float up to me out of the dark.
She was so sure, so wise. She knew so much more than I that as I answered her I knew it would do no good. Nothing could stop what was happening to me.
Then she was gone, the house was quiet, and I climbed slowly up the stairs to my room.
I lay there on the bed, staring out into the dark. I couldn’t sleep. The sound of her laughter, sure and knowing, still echoed in my ears.
I could hear the light click on in her room. Automatically I glanced toward it. She was there, looking toward my windows and smiling, and her naked body glistened in the electric light. Her voice was a husky half-whisper as it came through the open window. “Danny, are you awake?”
I shut my eyes and turned away from the window. I wouldn’t look. I wouldn’t answer.
“Don’t try to fool me, Danny. I know you’re there.” Her voice had grown harsh, with a tone of command. “Look at me, Danny!”
I couldn’t stand the sound of her voice hammering at me any longer. Angrily I went to the window and leaned against the
window-sill
, my body trembling. “Leave me alone,” I begged her. “Please leave me alone.”
She laughed. “Look at me, Danny,” she said softly. “Don’t you like to look at me?”
I stood there staring at her speechlessly. I didn’t want to look at her, but I couldn’t turn away.
She straightened up and laughed. “Danny!”
“What?” I asked in an agonized voice.
“Turn on your light, Danny. I want to see you!”
For a moment I didn’t understand her; then her words sank into the depths of my mind. My breath caught sharply in my throat.
“No!” I cried out. Shame and fear tore through me. I moved away from the window. “Leave me alone, I tell you, leave me alone!”
“Turn on the light, Danny.” Her voice was soft and persuading. “For me, Danny, please.”
“No!” I screamed at her in a blazing moment of rebellion. I hated everything that was happening to me—all the things I would become, my growing manhood and its manner of expression.
“I won’t!” I shouted, and ran out, slamming the door on my room and all that I could see from it.
I ran down to the bathroom and stripped off my pyjamas.
I held on to the sink with one hand and turned the water on in the shower. The sound of the water drumming against the bottom of the tub was soothing. For a moment I stood there, then stepped under the spray.
The cold water striking my heated body sent a rapid chill through me. I braced myself against the needle spray. Then suddenly I slumped to the floor of the tub and began to cry.
In the morning when I woke up it was as if nothing had happened. As if last night had been part of a dream, a nightmare, that sleep had washed away.
I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, and while I dressed I hummed a song. In surprise, I looked at myself in the mirror. With a sense of wonder, I realized there was nothing wrong with me.
I left the room smiling. Mimi was in the hall, going to the bathroom. “Good morning,” I sang out.
She looked at me and smiled. “Good morning,” she replied. “You were sleeping so soundly last night you didn’t even hear us come in.”
“I know.” I grinned at her. I guessed our private war was over. Rexie followed me down the stairs.
“Morning, Ma,” I called, going into the kitchen. “Rolls today?”
Mamma smiled tolerantly at me. “Don’t ask foolish questions, Danny.”
“Okay, Ma.” I took the money from the tumbler at the sink and started for the door. “C’mon, Rexie.”
Wagging her tail, she followed me out of the house. She ran past me in the alleyway and out into the street, where she squatted down in the gutter. I looked at her, smiling. It was a beautiful morning; it would be a wonderful day. The sun was shining and the air was fresh and crisp.