by Gary Soto
Teenage Chimps
Because I was broke and in the middle of a dull summer, I sat on the front porch playing heads-you-win, tails-you-lose with a bottle cap. I had drunk my last cream soda and followed it up with a banana that I unzipped with a fingernail. I tossed the peel into the flower bed. I sprinkled a few drops of soda on the porch and—presto!—ants appeared with their antennae waving like knives. I peered down at the chain of ants and wished I could reduce myself to their size and follow them to their hole. I wondered how they lived, those little ants, and felt great pity for them when I thought about how dearly they paid when a shoe smashed their guts.
But the ants were eventually boring. I flicked a bottle cap that went sailing onto the lawn, then tried to see if I could spit and hit the bottle cap. No luck. Spitting just made me thirsty. I got up, went inside the house for a drink of water, and returned in time to find this mocoso kid on a bicycle riding by. He yelled, "Hey, Chango!"
I jerked up my head in greeting.
The kid circled back and asked as he sped by, "How come you don't live in a zoo?"
At last an opportunity to shake off my boredom. I yelled that his parents, the hyenas, wouldn't let me. I stood up and yelled, "No, wait a minute! It's because your fat elephant mom won't make room for me."
The kid laughed as he gave me the finger and rode away doing a wheelie. His skinny shadow followed behind.
That little mocoso on the bike had it right. You see, I was once a boy, like any other, but I slowly turned into a chimpanzee when I was thirteen.
One morning I woke up craving bananas. When I jumped out of bed, I noticed that my arms hung a little closer to the ground. Dang, I thought, as I walked, arms dragging, to the bathroom. In the mirror I saw that my ears stuck out a little bit and my lower lip hung down. My nose was flat; my face, furry. Time to start shaving. I had the special gift of baring my teeth all the way to the gums. I had known ever since I was a little kid that I wasn't going to grow up to be a GQ model but a monkey.
My mother had always called me a monkey when I was really little because I used to bounce on the bed and couch, and climb the peach tree in the yard.
"Chango, stop that!" she would yell. "This is a house, not a zoo!"
Then again, Mom appreciated that I was cute as a chimp. She sold Avon products and would take me with her door-to-door through the rich part of town. When those doors opened, the homeowners, suspicious of peddlers, would scowl at my mother. Who wants anybody coming to your house selling stuff that don't work? Perfume only sweetens how you smell, not your personality. Then the owners' eyes would settle on me, a little monkey boy at my mother's side. Their faces would break into smiles, and in we went to the living room, where my mom would set bottles on the coffee table. That's how we got by in our family—Mom out selling Avon and sometimes sets of electric carving knives.
Meanwhile, Dad worked on cars in our driveway. He was a terrible mechanic who read Toyota manuals to repair Hondas, and Honda manuals to repair Volvos. The cars worked—or almost worked—when they pulled into our driveway. But by the time he finished with them, they would barely cough alive. The mufflers shot out blue smoke that brought tears to your eyes. Dad would scratch his head and leave oil in his already oily hair and mutter, "¿Quién sabe?"
But Dad ran away with a woman whose car he actually fixed—he replaced the starter and off they went in a Miata convertible that purred like a kitten. That was two years ago. Now I'm fifteen and more chimp than ever. I would be really lonely, except I have one friend who turned into a chimp when he was thirteen, too. His name is Joey Rios, a former wrestler in middle school. But he had to stop wrestling because every time he pinned an opponent, he would jump on the other guy's back and beat his own chest. He would let out a loud chimp scream that bounced off the gym's rafters. Coach said he was making too much noise pollution.
Joey and I hung out together in high school, sad that there were no monkey bars to keep us busy during break. There were no chimp girls, either. No one liked us. They would shove us out of the way, warning, "Don't slip on your bananas" or "How come your arms are so long?"
So Joey and me hung out behind a backstop, our eyes sometimes peering through the knotholes at the students having regular lives, you know, like girlfriends, clubs, after-school car washes, skateboarding, and playing in the band. We would hang out by the backstop looking at old National Geographies.
There was one teacher who felt sorry for us, but he got it wrong. Trying to be nice, he sometimes offered us bananas. It was sort of insulting. We would take the bananas, thank him, and walk away with them stuffed in our pockets like pistols. But most teachers just looked through us, even if we raised our hands to answer a question. Excited, I would mouth, "I know the answer. I know the answer." One day I realized how long my armpit hair was. From then on I kept my arms at my side.
My name is Ronaldo Gonzalez, better known as Ronnie. Joey and me are buddies for life. When we walk, we walk in step. When we look in the mirror, we see that we're the same, though Joey's ears stick out just a little bit more than mine. We're the only chimps we know who can do math, read a book, and speak both English and Spanish in a tree. But I wasn't in a tree when Joey rode up on his lowrider bicycle. I was on the porch.
"Joey!" I yelled, and jumped up and down in happiness.
Joey tossed his bike aside and beat his chest. He gave me a chimp smile. "I found some girls like us," he announced breathlessly.
"What do you mean?"
"Chimp girls. I saw them over by the canal."
I swallowed at the prospect of holding hands with a chimp girl. Chimp girls for us? Really? I pictured us walking hand in hand as our arms dragged on the ground. I pictured me letting my date take a bite out of an apple, and then me taking a bite out of the apple. After every fourth bite, I would get a kiss.
"You're lying, huh?" I asked. Maybe he's trying to fool me, I thought.
"Nah, chimp, I'm not." Joey expressed a hurt look. He scratched his armpit.
With me on the handlebars, we bicycled to the canal, where sometimes Joey and me swam, our toes never touching bottom because of the glass and junk that lay there. One time a car was submerged there, and I recognized it as one my dad had worked on. I figured the owner and a few of his buddies just rolled it into the canal and walked away.
At the canal we didn't find any chimp girls. We rode up and down the sandy banks and only found toads sitting on rocks. Lizards darting between the brush. Crickets making that cricket noise. A dead bird with a string of ants crawling from its eyes lay near a burger wrapper.
"They were here," Joey said. "Really." Sad, he produced an amazing pout.
I believed Joey. I kicked a three-inch hole in the sand and toed the dead bird into its little grave. I buried it by kicking sand in its face. I figured the sand wouldn't hurt him now. To me it was a disgrace that a poor dead bird should have no place to rest its twiggy bones.
We sat on the edge of the canal. We were more lonely than ever. We watched bluegills surface and mouth the dirty water. One fish seemed to throw up its food and then eat it again.
"I'd hate to be a fish," I said, disgusted.
"Yeah," Joey lamented. "But I hate being a chimp." He asked me if I remembered being a regular kid.
A regular kid?
"Yeah," I remarked, and tossed a rock into the water. The fish moved heavily toward the descending rock. I told him how I remembered being a baby in my crib and how at night I used to stare out the window. Stars hung in the sky. I confessed to Joey how I thought the stars were looking at me. Then, later, just after I turned into a chimp, I told my mom about the stars I used to see from my crib. Mom made a face that wrinkled her mouth. She said the stars didn't care about me or anyone else. She said that while splashing Avon cologne on her throat and some on me because, she said, my fur smelled wet.
"That's mean," Joey moaned.
"Yeah," I said, stirring my hand in the sand. I was about to tell Joey about really neat clouds I had seen from my window whe
n some kids from school appeared on their dirt bikes. They had turned into rhinos. They were huge, and each sported a single horn on its forehead.
"Whatta you chimps doing?" Cory snarled as he tossed his bike aside. Cory used to be my friend in first grade, but when I wouldn't join him and pee against a wall, he beat me up. He said to keep away from him until the end of time.
"Nothing," I said weakly.
Joey stared at the ground. I knew he was sizing up a place to fall if Cory and his friend—I forget his name—decided to push us around. Joey and I had learned that when a bully started to hit us, we could fall to the ground and pretend we were hurt. It seemed like we did that a lot. I don't know what Joey thought when he was on the ground, but I remembered the stars from my crib and wished someone really nice—like God—would come down on one of them and save us. But the only stars I saw were when I got smacked in the face. It hurt a little, but not too much. Now Cory stood in front of us. The horn on his forehead was shiny with pimples.
"I feel like beating you up," Cory said. His hands closed naturally into fists.
"You already did that," I said.
"When?"
"Last week," I lied.
Cory seemed to think about it. "Oh yeah, that's right." Then he walked over to the canal and unzipped his pants. He peed with his face turned skyward. His rhino friend did the same.
"What you chimps doing?" Cory's friend asked after he finished polluting the canal water.
"Waiting for girls," Joey answered honestly.
Neither Cory nor his friend laughed very long. Just a couple of grunts from their rhino mouths. I knew why. They were lonely, too, these huge rhinos who desperately wanted to find two girls. I imagined them clacking their horns together in friendship and love.
"Did you kiss them and stuff?" Cory asked. His eyes were wet and wild, and he was hoping that something exciting had happened.
"Not really," Joey said.
"What do you mean 'not really'? You did or you didn't."
Joey explained that he saw two girls at the canal earlier in the day, but that they had left before we showed up.
"They're teasers," Cory's friend, Jason, said.
I had just remembered his name. His family had been mentioned in the newspaper when his younger brother had been kidnapped. Later they found his body in Kansas, a place, I thought, where only tornadoes ruined people's lives.
Joey and me got to our feet. We climbed on our bike and said, "See you guys," and pedaled away slowly through the soft sand. Joey groaned as he tried to pick up speed. I looked over my shoulder. The two grinning rhinos were throwing rocks at us. They were not mad or anything. They just couldn't let us go without doing something to us. It was in their rhino blood.
We returned to my house, where I fixed us pineapple smoothies. We drank them in a tree and stayed there until my mother drove up the driveway. She was with her boyfriend, a guy who looks like a giraffe.
"I'll see you later," Joey said when my mom and her giraffe went inside. He dropped to the ground and rode off. I remained in the tree until it was dusk and the first star appeared in the east. "O star, 0 star," I sang. "Come back and make me into a boy again. O star, O star, remember when I was in my crib?" I cried a little and then went inside.
The next day Joey showed up doing a wheelie up our driveway. He rode around the lawn standing on the handlebars. Then he jumped from his bike, rolled on the grass, and came up smiling his chimp smile. He had good news.
"I think I got a way to make money."
"Like how?"
Joey brought out a coat hanger from his back pocket.
"Guess?"
Me, I was never good at guessing, even on multiple-choice tests.
"Quit being a chimp!" I growled. "Just tell me!"
Joey raised his eyes up to our roof.
"What does that mean?"
"It means money."
I was tired of Joey playing with me. I posted my long arms on my hips and shook my head, blubbering my lips. I picked up his lowrider bike and held it over my head, threatening to bring it down onto the lawn, hard. I tossed the bike at him. Joey caught it and began to juggle the bike, tire over tire, before he tossed it to me. I juggled it myself and then set the bike down.
"Okay, what do you mean about money?"
Joey explained that because we were good at climbing, we could clean gutters and maybe sweep leaves and stuff off roofs. He said that we could charge, maybe—he used his fingers to make the point—about ten bananas a house.
Because the talk was money, I was all ears. But I blurted out, "Man, it's summer. Ain't no leaves in the gutters."
Joey ignored this technicality. He climbed up our roof and stabbed the coat hanger into the gutter. He held up a bunch of leaves like dollar bills. Joey let the leaves flutter from his hands, and I caught one and turned it over. Yeah, I thought. This could be a moneymaking scheme.
We went inside for ice water and halved a greenish banana in partnership.
That afternoon, with me on the handlebars, we pedaled down the street. Joey said that he had a nice uncle who would hire him. His uncle, he related, had only one eye and only one tooth to go with that eye. He said he was really old, something like forty, and had never been married. He'd had a dog once, but the dog went blind in both eyes and had to be put to sleep.
When we arrived in front of Joey's uncle's house, even before we rapped on the front door, we could see that no one was home. The curtains were drawn. Newspapers were piled on the roof. The thirsty flowers in the bed were hanging their heads over.
"When did you last see your uncle?" I asked.
Joey shrugged.
I was reaching for the garden hose to get a drink and to splash the flowers when a neighbor hollered, "What are you two monkeying around in the yard for?"
My hand pulled back from the faucet.
"My uncle lives here," Joey said.
The man sucked on an unlit pipe. "Did. He got ill and they had to take him away." The man leaned toward us and, giving off the smell of tobacco, whispered, "They think he has cancer. My name is Melvin."
Joey's mouth dropped into a frown. He fit a finger into his ear and scratched.
"I'm his nephew Joey, and no one told me," Joey said sadly. He pulled his finger out of his ear. Joey pointed at me and introduced me as Ronnie.
The neighbor tapped his pipe against his palm. He jingled his coins and car keys in his pocket.
Seeing the need to move the conversation away from a lull, I announced our entrepreneurial spirit. "Sir, you need your gutters cleaned?" I nudged Joey for him to show the neighbor the coat hanger.
"We call this our gutter wand," Joey explained. He swished it like a sword.
The neighbor frowned. "What are you, a wise guy?" He narrowed his eyes as if he thought we were making fun of him. He took out his hearing aid, which was the color of earwax, frowned at it, and put it back into the cavern of his old wrinkled ear.
"No, sir, we mean it," I said. I remembered wearing my grandmother's hearing aid at church and thinking that the priest was scolding me. He talked really loud.
"Are you two monkeys?" he asked.
I hated when people finally identified us as the wrong species.
"No, we're chimps," I answered. I was going to explain to him how Joey and me woke up when were thirteen and our bodies had changed. But I figured, why waste our breath on a guy who can't hear?
"Chimps? Monkeys? It's French to me." He asked us how much we would charge to get on the roof and adjust his antenna. "All I get is snowy TV."
Joey gazed at me. I could see dollar signs floating on the lenses of his eyeballs. I could see his lips form the word Lots.
"Three dollars," I said.
"Three dollars!"
I argued that it was way up there and that maybe we would get electrocuted rotating the antenna, or that maybe lightning might starch our fur. How would he ever explain to the police about two dead teenage chimps on his roof?
"You got
a point there," he said. He licked his lips, sucked them, and spat them out as if they were an unflavorful meat. "And I guess you got to figure inflation. Shoot, when I was a kid, I worked all day for three dollars." With a nod, he gave us the go-ahead, hitched up his pants, and went inside.
While we climbed the roof, Melvin opened up the living room window and stuck his head out. "You up there?" he yelled.
"Yeah," I answered.
"YOU UP THERE?" he yelled again.
We remembered that he was hard of hearing.
"YEAH," we hollered in chorus.
Melvin told us to turn the antenna to the left.
Joey and I gripped the antenna, which was hitched up with wires. We muscled our strength together and twisted the antenna until it creaked, from rust. A sparrow settled down to watch our progress.
"Come on! No monkeying around!" Melvin yelled. "I ain't paying you good money for nothing."
Melvin's voice startled the sparrow, which flew away.
"I don't like this guy," Joey said loudly as he scratched his armpits.
I had to agree. But I told him that it was a job and the boss could boss around his workers—or so I had heard. But then I saw that Joey wasn't listening.
"My poor uncle," Joey remarked as he looked over to his uncle's house. The roof was littered with newspapers.
I told Joey I was sorry that his uncle had only one eye and hardly any teeth. Plus, cancer?
"I hope I never get sick," Joey said.
"I don't mind getting sick, but losing an eyeball." I closed an eye and saw the world through one lens. I didn't like what I saw—everything seemed so far away, like I was looking through binoculars. I smacked my lips and imagined eating without any teeth. I could get soft foods like bananas and oranges down my throat, but apples and walnuts?
I set my hands on my hips. I turned east, where I had first seen a star shine down on me and believed it was God checking out things. This was a god who didn't care if you changed so much that you were no longer recognizable from your baby pictures. I told Joey about the stars and he said, "That's neat."
"Come on!" Melvin hollered again. "Oprah starts in five minutes."
