by C J Hribal
“Will you relax? It’s a party, goddamn it, a party!” Ernie drains his beer, slings the bottle into the alfalfa field.
“Hey, pisshead!” says Wally Jr., never exactly Ernie’s buddy. “Stop being an idiot.”
“Too late,” says Ernie. “I’m hap-hap-happy! Act happy, feel happy, be happy! Let me hear you say Amen! I said, Let me hear you say Amen!” He’s dancing, eyes closed, spinning first on one foot, then on two. The spirit’s within him. He spins again and dances right off the roof.
“Amen,” says Wally Jr.
In what was to be our last autumn in Elmhurst, our mother decided to throw a costume party for Halloween. Of course, we didn’t know it was to be our last autumn in Elmhurst. We—we kids, that is—still thought we were entrenched there. Cinderella was in eighth grade, already dreaming about life in high school. Robert Aaron was trying out for seventh-grade football. Horrible things were happening in the world, but our parents, at least in front of us, were pretending that everything was okay. “The static quo,” Nomi called it. “You can do worse in life than maintain the static quo.” A veteran of several bankruptcies and the Great Depression (“She doesn’t look sad anymore,” said Ike), she was allowed to pontificate in our household, even to our father, to whom her remark was directed.
Of course the static quo was not okay with our father. After months of silence on the subject and no visits to Uncle Louie, our mother took a different tack. Uncle Louie was to visit us. Our mother maintained the party was to cheer up Uncle Louie, but we guessed that it wasn’t only for him. Our mother was hoping that a real celebration, a party on a day usually reserved for the kiddies, and at our home, would make our father feel better, would make him forget about the sawn-in-half boat that was sitting now in our backyard. It also would bring Uncle Louie back into the fold, and reestablish our mother as hostess and peacemaker, not the distraught harridan who was forcing our father into his nightly pilgrimage to the Office. Our mother was no doubt aware that these were ambitions no party should bear, but she was also grimly determined that it be all these things. In the weeks before the party, our mother wore on her face an expression of aggressive niceness, as though her fierce good cheer would be contagious. Were it not for the fact that it was Halloween and we had our own desires, we’d have been creeped out by the alien, its smile fixed firmly in place, that had taken over our mother’s body.
The year of our parents’ costume party it was a warm Halloween. We were ecstatic. No winter coats covering up our costumes, and our hands wouldn’t freeze. Not quite ten, I was the Indian brave I had always thought I was. Down the outside seams of my jeans our mother had sewn strips of diamond-patterned cloth and had made a breechclout, vest, and headband out of the same material. Two pheasant tail feathers completed the headdress. My war paint was streaks of lipstick in three colors, and I was probably the only Indian brave east—or west—of the Mississippi who sported a blond crew cut.
I was looking forward to being out all evening. Out in the gloaming, as Artu would say. “The homer in the gloamer,” said our father, recalling a day when the Cubs still won pennants.
Oh, to be a ten-year-old at dusk in America!
Our mother had other plans. “Short night,” she said. “Patty Duckwa is going to babysit you.” Patty Duckwa? My heart did its lurchings. My brain twittered with an image of the bas relief Venus de Milo in Grandpa Cza-Cza’s basement, only she had Patty Duckwa’s arms and Patty Duckwa’s breasts. Flutterings in my stomach now, twitchings and tinglings in my groin. I barely heard our mother explaining that Cinderella, our usual babysitter, would need help later, and Nomi and Artu, who didn’t want to be in the house as the party got going, were going out for dinner and a movie. And our mother, who had a party to prepare for, wasn’t going to walk with the little ones. We had to. Patty would be over later. More tinglings.
We went outside. “Criminy,” said Robert Aaron. He had friends waiting for him. He and Cinderella and I were each assigned a sibling. Cinderella, a witch, had Peg Leg Meg, dressed as a princess. Robert Aaron, a pirate, had Ernie, a pumpkin. Ike and I (Ike was a sheikh, my costume from last year) had Wally Jr., whom Mom had dressed as an Indian brave, too. Great, I thought, just what I needed: a towheaded Indian in tow. How was I to maintain my ferocity and seriousness if a rotund, jolly, dimple-cheeked Indian was holding my hand? I could already hear the jokes: “Oh, are you blood brothers?” “Abner, come take a look at this—one little, two little Indian boys.” And then they’d start singing that song.
Wally Jr., Ernie, and Peg Leg Meg had plastic buckets with jack-o’-lantern faces. Our plan was to get those buckets filled as quickly as possible, then get these kids the hell home. Once we got out of earshot of our mother, the soft night air would belong to us.
It didn’t play out that way. We walked our charges around our block once, and around the block behind us, but when we got back our mother wasn’t ready yet, Patty Duckwa hadn’t come over yet, our father wasn’t home yet, and we had to take them on another round of the neighborhood. They were tired. They were whiny. Their hands were hot. We circled another block and brought them home. “Oh, good, you’re here,” said our mother. “Dinner’s ready, then it’s off to bed with you.” To bed? This early? On Halloween night? But we were just getting started. “I can’t help it,” said our mother. “The party’s going to start soon, your father isn’t here, and I can’t have you wandering around the neighborhood. Of course I don’t mean to bed to bed. I mean you have to be in your rooms, where Sarah and Patty can keep an eye on you.”
We begged, we pleaded—Just one more block, Mommy, pleeeeeeeease! just one more block? She relented. She was wiping her hands on a dish towel—her most characteristic gesture. “You’ll be the death of me,” she said, but she had given us her blessing. We took off like a shot.
It was already dark. We had no intention of going only a single block. We’d already visited every house in a three-block radius. Robert Aaron suggested we split up. “We’ll cover more ground that way. It’s getting late.”
“It’s already late,” countered Cinderella. “You’re just hoping to run into your friends.”
They would have argued this point longer, but Robert Aaron pointed out they were wasting time. “So fine,” said Cinderella. “How do we meet up again?”
“Who says we need to meet up?”
“What’ll Mom say if we come back one at a time, and somebody stays out late?”
“What can she say about it?”
“Remember that time Emcee got ‘lost’ in the snowstorm and he was just sledding?”
“All right, all right. How about in an hour?”
“But what about Ike and me?” Up until this moment Ike and I had said nothing. But he and I didn’t have wristwatches. Robert Aaron and Cinderella did.
“You guys stay together,” Cinderella said. “And when you think an hour is up, ask somebody what time it is.” Now that Robert Aaron had suggested something out of bounds, Cinderella was only too happy to explain the new rules, to draw up the loose new parameters.
They were already walking away. “And where will we meet?” I called after them.
“How about the corner of Madison and York?”
“But that’s way past where Mom will allow us.”
“And who’s going to know?”
“Mom!” This was Ike’s contribution to the conversation. It almost sounded like he was calling after her, as though she were the one walking away.
“Only if you tell, you big baby.”
“We only have an hour.” I felt obligated to bring this up. Once Cinderella and Robert Aaron got started on breaking rules, there was no stopping them.
“So run.”
Which was what they did when they reached Madison. They took a left and burst into a windmill of legs. Ike and I followed them, calling out “Wait! Wait!” but they were too fast for us, and they’d already split up themselves.
They were heading into a new country, Robert Aaron and Cinderell
a, and it made me angry at having been left behind.
“What do we do now?” asked Ike. We were about three blocks from our house. Kids our age were still out in full force. Little packs of them, like costumed lab rats, scurried from feeding station to feeding station. All we had to do was join them.
“Split up ourselves,” I said.
“But how will we find them again?”
“You heard what they said. We meet at the corner of Madison and York in an hour. That’s not so hard. It’s right by our church.”
Ike’s voice had started to tremble with his very first question. I should have heard it when Robert Aaron and Cinderella were abandoning us, the plaintiveness in his voiced “Mom!” Now he was close to tears.
“But I can’t read,” Ike said.
“What do you mean, you can’t read? Of course you can read. You’re eight and a half years old. You’re in third grade, for God’s sake.”
I was repeating a conversation Ike had had with our father. Our mother crying. Like our father, I didn’t want to believe Ike, but I knew he was telling the truth. He could not read. He had dyslexia. It hadn’t been diagnosed at school, and it was Ike’s report cards that had set our father off. The teachers said he was slow, stupid, that he wasn’t putting forth enough effort. If only he’d try harder. Our mother didn’t believe them. She had spent the summer on a crusade to find out why Ike couldn’t read. She found out. One of the theories at the time was that dyslexic children hadn’t spent enough time crawling, developing the right focal distance to read. So part of Ike’s therapy, besides phonics and word flash cards, was crawling around the living room on his hands and knees. It was humiliating, and I knew that, and I knew, too, how hard it was for him to confess to me now that he couldn’t read.
He stood there trembling, waiting for me to say something else. He’d already said all he was going to. We were standing in a pool of streetlight, and it was like we were—I was—on trial. I thought of my loyalty to my brother, and I thought of Robert Aaron and Cinderella taking off on us. I wanted to be like them, alone and free. Breaking rules and happy to be doing it. It was liberating, I knew, my anger at him right at that moment. Renounce him and earn your own freedom. There he was, in a coat of many colors, sewn by our mother as his sheikh’s robe, a fez bobby-pinned to his auburn hair, a tiny devil’s goatee inked on his chin with eyebrow pencil, the curlicues of his pencil-thin mustache already starting to run as the tears trickled down his cheeks. His cheeks, still plump with baby fat. I hated him. Hated him for depending on me, for being foisted on me, hated my mother for expecting me to watch him, hated Cinderella and Robert Aaron for leaving him with me, for leaving us, for leaving me. But Ike was the only one I could leave right then, and I took full advantage of the opportunity. How I hated that baby fat. How I hated those plump cheeks. “You can’t read, you whiny little baby. Who wants to hang around a whiny little baby who can’t read?” And I took off running myself.
It did not take me long to feel remorse for what I had done, but by then I was blocks away. I had not looked back once. I trick-or-treated at a few houses, but my heart wasn’t in it. The elation of betrayal had lasted only as long as the words were coming out of my mouth and I was first running away from him. Then guilt sat in my mouth, heavy as mashed potatoes. A few more houses and I went back for him, but he wasn’t where I’d left him. Good, I thought, momentarily relieved and feeling vindictive. He’s fine and good riddance. About time he learned to fend for himself.
Then I started calling his name. “Ike, Ike, it’s me, Emcee! Come out, Ike! I’m sorry!” I don’t know why, but I thought he was hiding. I thought it’d be easy to find him. How many trick-or-treating sheikhs could there be? There weren’t any. Not one. I went up and down blocks for what seemed like hours. How long had it been? Which was when I realized that when we’d left nobody’d said what time it actually was, so what was an hour past a time you didn’t know?
I started calling his name, louder, then louder. I was shrieking. Other kids gave me strange looks. What kind of idiot misplaces our ex-president? “You looking for Eisenhower? Check the golf courses, dummy!” I realized then that a lot of kids my age had gone home. It was mostly older kids now—teenagers, even high schoolers. Their costumes were scarier—gruesome rubber masks and lifelike blood. The ghosts and the vampires seemed particularly disembodied, the Frankenstein’s monsters all too corporeal. I was scared, and then I really started to worry.
This was worse than losing myself. I had lost Ike, my brother. I went back to the rendezvous point. Robert Aaron and Cinderella were waiting. The buzz-cut pirate and the blond witch. “I lost Ike.” I ran up panting.
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Robert Aaron, who had recently discovered the delights of profanity. He cuffed the side of my head.
“What do we do?” I wailed.
“What do we do?” Robert Aaron wailed back, mocking me. “We split up is what we do. We each check a set number of blocks, then we come back.”
“Mom’s waiting.”
“Mom’s waiting. So what do you want to do, go back empty-handed and tell her?”
“I think we should,” Cinderella said. “At least she’d know only one of us was lost.”
“Yeah, and who was supposed to be watching him?”
“I was,” I said glumly.
“That’s what you think. What Mom’ll think is it was all of us who should’ve been watching him. We’re up shit’s creek if we don’t find him.” Robert Aaron checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes. We meet up here again in fifteen minutes. If we haven’t found him then—”
“What? What?”
Robert Aaron got a strange look on his face. He looked like Dad right then, befuddled and bemused, but seemingly in control of the situation. “Then we shall see what we shall see.”
I didn’t waste any time. I tore off straight for home. I was not in luck. The party was not in full swing; our mother had not forgotten about us. She grabbed my wrist as soon as I came in the door. “Where is everybody?”
“Still out. I lost them.” My voice trembled. I had told a general lie, afraid of the more specific one.
“Where’s Ike? Is he with the others?”
“I think so.”
For a moment luck was with me. Too anxious about the party just starting, she pushed me out the door again. “Go find them. Patty Duckwa will go with you.”
I hadn’t seen Patty. I waited in the gravel of our driveway. When she emerged she was backlit from the lights in the kitchen. This was more than a young boy should be expected to endure. She was dressed like a harem princess—like Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie. Her tummy, still mildly tan from the summer, was bare, and she’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail. She had on a poofy, slit-sleeved blouse you could see right through, and a red satin bra, from which her breasts rose like two scoops of ice cream.
Unfortunately, Patty Duckwa was pissed. She was pissed about being made to babysit us, pissed about being at a party with a bunch of “old fogies,” pissed about life in general. And here she was out, half-dressed, looking for a lost kid on a now coolish October night.
“Christ,” said Patty Duckwa. Unlike Robert Aaron, who was still learning, Patty Duckwa could swear elegantly. “So, where we going? And which of you is lost?”
I explained. We were at the corner of Swain and Madison. A car full of high schoolers screeched by us, its occupants catcalling at Patty: “Hey, sugar, how about a ride?” “Yeah, toots, I’ll give you a ride. The ride of your life!” “Trick or treat: your trick, my treat.”
“Christ,” said Patty Duckwa.
She would say that a lot as we walked up Madison. I had thought for a moment that maybe we would share this intimacy of the dark, maybe hold hands as we crossed streets even though I was too old to need my hand held. But we walked a gauntlet. Hidden behind masks and costumes, high school guys took liberties they wouldn’t have dared take if they’d seen her in her backyard. Like me, they would have been struck dumb. But n
ot so at night, out here, under the stars. The trick-or-treating was winding down except for the older kids up to no good. They were traveling in cars now, or roamed the streets in gangs—gorillas, commandos, vampires, werewolves, ghouls. Predators, every one of them. They said things. Suggested she ditch the Indian chief, come with them. At the corner of Madison and Kent a guy in a gorilla suit reached into the gap between the halves of the jean jacket she was wearing and palmed a breast. She slugged him. He laughed a gorilla laugh and ran.
It was no fun, I realized, being Patty Duckwa.
It was even less fun once we found Ike and made it back home. Cinderella and Robert Aaron had been waiting for us at York. We fanned out, Cinderella and Robert Aaron taking one side of the street, Patty Duckwa and I the other. We found Ike lying at the corner of Euclid and Oneida, a block north and west of where he was supposed to be, curled up into a ball behind some bushes that formed a capital L. He’d been weeping, but he was only mewling now. Patty squatted down and said, “So how are you, soldier?” I was immediately jealous. Her tone softened with Ike. He was her little soldier. I wanted to be Patty Duckwa’s little soldier. Why couldn’t it be me who’d gotten lost? I could have been Patty Duckwa’s brave little brave. Oh, the curse of having a decent sense of direction! Ike sat up, and his head collided with Patty’s chest. His fez was askew. The bobby pins had come undone on one side, and the fez flipped over. It looked like Patty Duckwa’s breasts had knocked his hat off and the hat, refusing to leave, was now asking for donations. Oh, to be Ike’s head right then! He didn’t seem to notice.
“Tell me what happened,” said Patty.
Ike’s story was a simple one. Abandoned by me, he had gone to Madison and York almost immediately. He was already on Madison, so he just had to walk up to the busiest street. He knew that. The problem was the busiest street was also where the high school kids congregated. They took his candy, cuffed him around a little, sent him on his way. They didn’t want him hanging around their street corner. By the time we got there they’d moved on, maybe afraid that the little sheikh would come back with his parents. Ike, crying, had wandered off, sat behind these bushes—he was afraid of other bullies finding him—and cried himself to sleep.
