Authors: Diane Munier
Disbro
Peak has a withered arm. He was born with it. He holds it against his chest
like a broken wing.
He’s
skinny. And he’s mad. Sometimes he goes with the Hardy Boys, sometimes he’s
with two younger boys my and Abigail’s age, Mike and Bobby. I hate them.
Thing
is Abigail May says she saw Jennifer at the five and dime and her mother was
buying her a bra.
I
can’t believe my ears. Abigail May and I still wear undershirts. My Granma
wouldn’t even believe she has to get me a bra cause I’m flat as a board.
“Was
she embarrassed?” I ask meaning Jennifer.
“I
was,” Abigail says.
Well
I’m embarrassed just hearing about it.
“Imagine
your Aunt May buying you a bra in the five and dime and along comes the Hardy
Boys,” I say, barely able to.
Abigail
squeals and kicks her feet and her flashlight goes rolling off her lap. We’re
in the bomb shelter by the way. We’re lying back on the blankets rolled up.
It’s cool down here.
Granma
yells down then. What is going on down there, and I say nothing. “Come on out
of there and go play in the sunshine,” she says.
“Yes
ma’am,” I say and we sigh and get up.
Later
on we are wearing our new sunglasses from Moe’s. He got some in in pink and
blue and Abigail May wanted to buy the pink ones too, and I got mad and said
fine I just won’t get any, and she gave in and got blue and I’m telling her
they are real nice as we skate along. Oh yeah we’re skating and we got our new
shoe skates on, our Roller Derby Street Kings we both got last Christmas. No
more keys and clamp-ons for us.
Hers
have yellow pom-poms and mine have pink. I wanted red but Granma got mixed up
so I got pink.
Anyway
we skate at Moe’s most evenings after supper. That way we don’t terrorize the
shoppers, as Moe puts it, cause we take that corner where the stoop and the
door are located pretty fast and mean. Luckily he closes at five so it’s a
pretty dead corner and paved without cracks, just one big L of smooth, smooth.
So
we get pretty fancy and folks are used to the two of us going back and forth
around Moe’s.
Now
catty-corner to Moe’s is the other store Mac’s. Granma and Aunt May don’t deal
there except after Moe’s closes if we want ice cream or we get desperate for
something.
Mac
is real nice to kids if they got a big person with them, but if a kid goes in
to look at the comics he won’t even let you look he says, “Hurry up there.
Hurry up there now,” cause he lives in back and he wants to get back to his
television. But if I go in with Granma he plucks at me and gives me a sucker
and he smiles so big it looks like
The Twilight Zone
.
“That
big phony,” Granma says.
But
we’ve been skating a while when I hear this whistle, like Frank Sinatra might
whistle at Marilyn Monroe if he knows her.
But
I don’t think I say that at all.
Darnay
Road 5
After
my famous almost getting killed skating show I have to stay in bed for a couple
of days. Once my broken arm heals I’ll be good as new the doc says.
I
have a cast made out of plaster. It’s huge. I can’t believe it. And I lie on
the porch when I get home and over the next couple of days kids from school
come by, well three or four do with their mothers, and neighbors come and I
tell my story again and again and again. And they sign the cast with red pen.
Now
I can’t go swimming but I can put on my swimming suit if I want but I tell
Granma what the heck for? I can’t even go to the pool or anything. What about
swimming lessons? And how will I make a necklace out of Indian beads at day
camp or dance with Abigail? And my spy work is over. Mostly. Abigail says it’s
like
Rear Window
, almost my favorite movie ever. So now I’m Jimmy
Stewart? What is she, Grace Kelly?
I
should never have gone up to the altar. God is punishing me. I say rosary after
rosary that he won’t punish Abigail too. I ask that my punishment is enough for
us both. But I don’t tell Abigail. I do give her my lucky rabbit’s foot, the
pink one because it’s not working for me, and I don’t say this, but she needs
all the help she can get.
When
God is mad at you you’re in so so much trouble because he owns everything and
he can use it.
Granma
says God is not mad at me, for heaven sakes I’m dramatic but she doesn’t know
what I’ve been up to. She says if God was mad at me I would have gotten hit by
Mr. Ferguson instead of scared silly and getting my skate caught in the bricks
and going down like that.
But
I broke the wheel off my new skate and one of the pom-poms are gone and Abigail
May tried to find it and she couldn’t.
Who
would tear it off of me, a poor kid lying in the street? I don’t know what to
think.
But
I know what I think about, yes I do.
James
Darrin. I know I hit my head, but it’s not hitting my head that made me see
him. He was the first thing when I woke up and he was right there. I call him
Frank Hardy. Abigail says a hundred times I said Moondoggie but I don’t let her
know I saw him—Frank Hardy. I don’t tell her that because how else can I deny
it? I didn’t say Moondoggie. I would never say that.
I
know I pee a little. And I’m so mad I don’t even know the first ten times that
bomb pop stains my white eyelet crop top.
I
can never leave this porch again.
I
do like to go to the show. Abigail and I go every single Wednesday, two movies
and cartoons for fifty cents. Granma always lets me go. When I come home she’s
sitting on the porch drinking out of the dark green glass singing, “Kansas City
Here I Come.”
But
before that I go to the matinee with Abigail. Her Aunt May drives us, I mean we
don’t walk like usual now that I’m practically a mummy.
“Why
do you hold it like a baby?” Abigail says.
“It
makes my shoulder tired,” I say like she just can’t understand because she
can’t.
“Where’s
your sling?” Aunt May asks me looking in the mirror.
“It
gets too hot,” Abigail May answers for me from beside Aunt May. So I close my
mouth because Abigail May has all the answers in the world. She got her pixie
cut fresh just that morning at Edna’s beauty parlor and Aunt May is all poofed
up and ready to go nowhere.
I
sigh. Granma pinned my braids on top of my head like a crown. I think I look
like Heidi, almost my favorite story but one of the pins is digging my scalp.
Granma always says we must suffer to be beautiful. I sure hope I’m beautiful
someday cause I am suffering, that’s for sure.
Then
I think of Miss Little. She is suffering. I think that, I don’t know why. But
she is not beautiful. So I just sigh again.
When
we get to the show there is a long line. We are walking to the back and
everyone is looking at us because of my arm and me almost getting killed. So
I’m a little proud and a little embarrassed. Well a lot embarrassed cause
Disbro Peak is last in line, but he’s by his skinny self. So we get in line and
it’s so embarrassing. Disbro’s elbow sticks out to the left and mine sticks out
to the right. I just feel so dumb and then he turns around grinning and says,
“Moondoggie,” with a face like a jack-o-lantern. Apparently he’s never
suffered. Well except for his arm, but he doesn’t seem to mind, I will say
that.
I
stare at him like I don’t know who he is but I feel those dark red splotches
burning into my cheeks. Abigail May steps in front of me and stares at him. I
know she’s crossing her eyes. She can get by with it cause of Ricky.
Then
what do you think. This just gets worse by far and I think the skin on my
cheeks will split like two plums cause Ricky comes out of nowhere and he says
to Abigail, “Hey give me some money.”
Then
he’s right there, behind Ricky standing with the other one. Alias Frank Hardy
standing with alias Joe Hardy alias the Hardy Boys.
I
wish they had wrapped my face too, like the invisible man. Thank goodness I’m
wearing my sunglasses. Maybe he can’t see my eyes. But he’s kind of looking.
And he’s smoking. I think he’s eleven but he’s tall and he has big hands and
somehow, I just don’t think his mother loves him like she should, either one of
them with their thin, ripped t-shirts.
“Hey
Kookie lend me your comb,” Abigail says to Frank. I mean right to him cause his
hair is long and he combs it back with his hand but it flops onto his forehead.
He smiles and takes a pull of that Camel. I see it’s Camel. Joe laughs too,
this kind of punk smirk. I cross one ankle over the other.
I
can’t believe she said that. It’s like what a big girl says. I can’t believe
it. And he liked it cause he’s laughing and so is Joe, calling him Kookie and
he knocks Joe’s hand off.
Ricky
waves his hand in Abigail’s face like the three stooges would and they move off
and I can’t speak. Someone nudges me from behind because the line is moving and
I am stuck.
I
turn around and it’s him. “Hey ballerina,” he says, and he does this thing with
his lips so he doesn’t blow that smoke in my face but he blows it to the side
in a stream then he pitches that smoke and I’ll tell you one thing…brother.
They
really do leave then. Abigail says they’ll sneak in. Big boys do it all the
time. They go around back and sneak in as soon as the cartoons start. I look at
Abigail. “He called you ballerina,” she says.
But
Disbro is right there. “Greenie has a boyfriend,” he says like three times.
“Shut
up Disbro Peak,” Abigail says right in his face. “Don’t you talk to her.”
Oh
we are gonna pay for that. But I can’t even be scared right now.
Why
would Frank Hardy call me ballerina?
This
might be the best summer of my whole life.
Darnay
Road 6
We
saw
The Nutty Professor
and we loved it, loved it, loved it. But not as
much as what happened before waiting to go inside.
I
watched the side door and the Hardy Boys came in during cartoons and they got
thrown out before the movie started cause Steven was working, and he’s the
owner’s son and he’s a senior in high school so those boys had to run and get
out and everyone clapped.
So
on the way home we’re not talking to Aunt May and Abigail is sitting next to me
and we’re slid down in the seat, well me not so much with mummy baby, but we
have our heads close and I can smell the cube-steak sandwich on Abigail’s
breath because we went to Wellman’s after the movies and ate lunch.
“I’ll
bet Jennifer….” I can’t even finish that sentence. I’d die if I saw him with
another girl.
“I
know,” Abigail says excitedly. She sunk even lower, “we’ll go to Woolworth’s
and each buy a you-know-what.”
I
am staring at her. I know all of her faces and she means business.
“There’s
nothing to put in them,” I remind her, barely able to think about such an
embarrassing thing as standing at that counter and picking out bras then
walking through the store holding them, then standing in the check out. I know
my face has the blotches again.
“That’s
what toilet paper is for,” she says, pinching my good arm.
I
shove her a little for that, and she licks where she pinched, then I say, “Ew,”
but I can’t get my hand over there to wipe it off so I’m telling her to wipe
her cube-steak spit off of me, and Aunt May tells us to settle down.
Later
that evening after supper we’re hanging around on my porch while the sun goes down
and the crickets start up and the lightning bugs twinkle. I just love
everybody.
Abigail
has been singing for me and Granma, dragging the hose nozzle up on the porch
and a good length of hose with it so she has a microphone. Right now she’s
singing, “Easier Said Than Done,” by the Essex. She has the whitest teeth and
she sticks her hip out when she croons. It’s very funny.
I’d
be singing with her, but of course my arm. And I’m a ballerina now. “Granma,
how much are dance lessons?” I say when Abigail finally plops in the chair to
drink her Coca-Cola.
Granma
is reading her stories. Abigail May and I are not allowed to touch her
paperbacks or her magazines. But sometimes, well one time I spied, of course,
and we took a couple of them to the bomb shelter to check out. They were pretty
grown-up. Every lady had her dress hanging off one shoulder or the other and
lots of necking and lovey-dove. One had a pair of black stockings with holes
and she had her dress up enough to see her garter and she wore high heels. I
don’t know what Granma is up to with those stories of hers. “That Troy Donahue
can’t act,” she says flipping the page then she goes on reading like I’m a
little buzzing bug or something.
“Granma
could you answer a person’s question please?” I say.
She
lowers her story a little and peeks at me.
“Kilroy,”
Abigail says and we both laugh and Granma squints like she’s not wearing her
glasses.
“Just
get it out of your head, honey.”
“Why?”
I say. Granma knows I’m a perfectly good dancer. Cha-cha, twist, waltz. I got
those three down-pat.
“I’ve
taught you all the dances you need to know to have a good time,” she says.
“Ballerina,”
Abigail says, then she grins at me when my mouth drops open. She better not
tell Granma.
“You
don’t need to be a ballerina. For heaven sakes you have a broken arm.” She goes
right back to reading.
I
let Abigail May have it about telling Granma ‘ballerina.’
“I
didn’t say it,” she says. “She don’t care about anything but her old stories
anyway.”
Now
we stop. “What’s that mean?”
She
gulps cause she knows when she goes too far. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t
say it then. Don’t say something you don’t know anything about,” I say cause
Abigail May can make me see red, my favorite color, sometimes.
“Well
so, so, so sorry,” she says with a stinky attitude and her hands on her hips
just like Aunt May does her.
“I’m
gonna march right over there and tell your Aunt May,” I say.
“Tell
her what?” Abigail says showing those little bright teeth.
He
goes whizzing past then, the three of them. Last one past throws a water
balloon that splashes near Abigail’s feet. Abigail is already yelling after,
“She ain’t supposed to get her cast wet, you know.”
I
turn to look and that last, the one who threw the balloon was Joe Hardy. I
think he tried to hit Abigail.
Frank
is standing on the pedals going faster and faster, then he puts his foot down
and fishtails around. No wonder their bikes look all rattle trap, just stripped
down to nothing but frame and wheels and banana seats and handle bars. Frank
peddles back to us and I close my mouth so quickly my teeth clack.
He
skids to a sideways stop right in front of me and his tennis shoes are so beat
up and no wonder using them like Fred Flintstone would. But up close, even
sweaty, grimy, and tattered, he has that boy smell they get which is ew on some
and hum on others. Or just a couple.
“Got
a pen?” he says looking at my cast like he’s fixing to sign it.
Why
would I have a pen in the middle of the street? I’m shaking my head no,
cradling my broken arm like usual.
“I’ll
get one,” Abigail says. She runs right off and leaves me alone with him. Joe
and Ricky are circling back.
I
hear Abigail’s screen-door slam and all I can do is look at Frank, who is
lighting a cigarette right where Granma can see but she’s probably so deep in
her story she don’t notice. He lights that smoke right there and I swallow so
loud I’m sure he can hear.
“Why’d
you call me ballerina?” I say, but I don’t plan to say it or anything, it just
comes right out.
He
shakes out the match and pitches that and takes a drag and he lets it out and
I’m just so patiently watching. He’s looking at me and he says, “You’re
pretty.”
Ricky
and Joe go whizzing past and they call to him, “C’mon leave that kid alone,”
Ricky says.
That
kid?
He
takes off then after them like I ain’t even standing here. Abigail is getting
back with the pen and she calls to him but he doesn’t even look he rides off
into the twilight and leaves us side by side.
“What’d
he say?” she says.
I
come to life then. “Why’d you leave me? I was all alone with him.”
“He
likes you.”
“He said I was pretty,”
I say like it’s the biggest mystery of all.
“He
did?” she’s both excited and worried.
“Yes.
That’s all. I asked why he called me ballerina and he said I was pretty.”
“Well…he
must like you,” Abigail says. “But he’s a heathen.”
I
know he ain’t a Catholic and he goes to public and he lives on Scutter Road. I
know.
But
I don’t care very much.