by Gary Soto
“You kids were really something,” my aunt said. She picked up my cup from the end table and wiped the ring of water. When she offered me a cookie, I smiled but refused because a grain or two of crumbled cookie might fall on her rug.
In the same photo album there were nice snapshots of beaches and new cars and houses. Grandfather is standing in front of his avocado tree. Grandmother is pinching aphids from a rose bush. Mexico is a still-water fountain splashing forever in the dusty light of Mexico. My aunt pointed to a distant uncle with a guitarron in his arm, and tapped a long red fingernail on the face of the Raisin queen of a 1940s parade. “This is a friend of mine,” she said, and then said, “she didn't last long like that,” meaning her flat tummy and pointed breasts, meaning her hair piled up and the flashy beauty of straight teeth. She followed my aunt to the cannery and a dull marriage of stewing diapers on the stove.
When I turned the page, we returned once again to brotherly snapshots, this time in color. Rick and I are leaping high from a playground swing, our arms crossed and our faces stern as mad genies. In a creased snapshot, we are flinging down a handful of popcorn to a gray sea of pigeons. Sister's shadow is flat on the ground, minus her pinwheel, and there's the start of another shadow which may well be our mother's.
I bit into one of my aunt's cookies. Three crumbs fell on the rug and immediately she dropped to one arthritic knee. I turned the page of the album. There were photographs of my cousin's wedding in San Jose. No one looks happy or young, except Rick and me. We had discovered the laundry chute and two wet mops that we used as lances as we ran down the hall. We had discovered that we could eat and drink as much as we pleased.
My brother and I loved fighting at family get-togethers. We were lucky not to lose teeth. We didn't bruise easily or break arms when we fell. Neither of us liked the sparks of pain, but neither of us could quite stop windmilling our tiny arms at each other. It was too much fun.
Now at Christmas, we stand next to each other talking about money made and money lost. We open expensive presents and make funny faces into the Polaroid camera when we've drunk too much. Rick likes to bare his teeth, and I like to lower my head slightly so that my eyes roll up like a doll's peering through its frontal lobe. My sister's shadow falls on the wall. I look and catch her licking sweets from one long, red fingernail. She likes to eat, and likes to bring in money. I wonder if she remembers her pin-wheel and the time when she stomped a black shoe in a little dance. Back when our uncles stood around fumbling for coins in their pockets. When the days were black and white, and Brownie cameras sucked in a part of our lives through round, smudged lenses.
______
The Gymnast
FOR THREE DAYS of my eleventh summer I listened to my mother yap about my cousin, Issac, who was taking gymnastics. She was proud of him, she said one evening at the stove as she pounded a round steak into carne asada and crushed a heap of beans into refritos. I was jealous because I had watched my share of “Wide World of Sports” and knew that people admired an athlete who could somersault without hurting himself. I pushed aside my solitary game of Chinese checkers and spent a few minutes rolling around the backyard until I was dizzy and itchy with grass.
That Saturday, I went to Issac's house where I ate plums and sat under an aluminum arbor watching my cousin, dressed in gymnastic shorts and top, do spindly cartwheels and backflips in his backyard while he instructed, “This is the correct way.” He breathed in the grassy air, leaped, and came up smiling the straightest teeth in the world.
I followed him to the front lawn. When a car passed, he did a backflip and looked out the side of his eyes to see if any of the passengers were looking. Some pointed while others looked ahead dully at the road.
My cousin was a showoff, but I figured he was allowed the limelight before one appreciative dog who had come over to look. I envied him and his cloth gymnast shoes. I liked the way they looked, slim, black and cool. They seemed special, something I could never slip onto my feet.
I ate the plums and watched him until he was sweaty and out of breath. When he was finished, I begged him to let me wear his cloth shoes. Drops of sweat fell at his feet. He looked at me with disdain, ran a yellow towel across his face, and patted his neck dry. He tore the white tape from his wrists—I liked the tape as well and tried to paste it around my wrists. He washed off his hands. I asked him about the white powder, and he said it kept his hands dry. I asked him why he needed dry hands to do cartwheels and back flips. He said that all gymnasts kept their hands dry, then drank from a bottle of greenish water he said was filled with nutrients.
I asked him again if I could wear his shoes. He slipped them off and said, “OK, just for a while.” The shoes were loose, but I liked them. I went to the front yard with my wrists dripping tape and my hands white as gloves. I smiled slyly and thought I looked neat. But when I did a cartwheel, the shoes flew off, along with the tape, and my cousin yelled and stomped the grass.
I was glad to get home. I was jealous and miserable, but the next day I found a pair of old vinyl slippers in the closet that were sort of like gymnastic shoes. I pushed my feet into them, tugging and wincing because they were too small. I took a few steps, admiring my feet, which looked like bloated water balloons, and went outside to do cartwheels on the front lawn. A friend skidded to a stop on his bike, one cheek fat with sunflower seeds. His mouth churned to a stop. He asked why I was wearing slippers on a hot day. I made a face at him and said that they were gymnastic shoes, not slippers. He watched me do cartwheels for a while, then rode away doing a wheelie.
I returned inside. I looked for tape to wrap my wrists, but could find only circle band-aids in the medicine cabinet. I dipped my hands in flour to keep them dry and went back outside to do cartwheels and, finally, after much hesitation, a backflip that nearly cost me my life when I landed on my head. I crawled to the shade, stars of pain pulsating in my shoulder and neck.
My brother glided by on his bike, smooth as a kite. He stared at me and asked why I was wearing slippers. I didn't answer him. My neck still hurt. He asked about the flour on my hands, and I told him to leave me alone. I turned on the hose and drank cool water.
I walked to Romain playground where I played Chinese checkers and was asked a dozen times why I was wearing slippers. I'm taking gymnastics, I lied, and these are the kind of shoes you wear. When one kid asked why I had white powder on my hands and in my hair, I gave up on Chinese checkers and returned home, my feet throbbing. But before I went inside, I took off the slippers. My toes cooled on the summery grass. I ran a garden hose on my feet and bluish ankles, and a chill ran up my back.
Dinner was a ten-minute affair of piranha-like eating and thirty minutes of washing dishes. Once finished, I returned to the backyard, where I again stuffed my feet into the slippers and did cartwheels by the dizzy dozens. After a while they were easy. I had to move on. I sucked in the summer air, along with the smoke of a faraway barbecue, and tried a backflip. I landed on my neck again, and this time I saw an orange burst behind my eyes. I lay on the grass, tired and sweaty, my feet squeezed in the vise of cruel slippers.
I watched the dusk settle and the first stars, pinpoints of unfortunate light tangled in telephone wires. I ate a plum, cussed, and pictured my cousin, who was probably cartwheeling to the audience of one sleeping dog.
______
The Promises
I PROMISED to rake the leaves and gather the tools from the lawn before it rained. I promised to make my bed. I promised to replace the cap to the toothpaste and wipe the sink of water spots and renegade hairs. I promised to stomp on the oil-spotted bags of garbage when our can was overflowing and ready to burst terrible gases. When my mother spoke, I said yes. When my stepfather spoke, I said yes, right now, and searched for the nearest broom. When an ambulance passed, I crossed myself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Promise. That's what Monsignor asked on the last day of school when he pressed papers into my hands and said that
I should think of others. A dusty wind fluttered the school roll-up shades of St. John's Elementary. Sister Marie cast a meager shadow when she floated down the hallway. The picture of Jesus, flame to his brow, followed me out of the classroom and into the sunlight where my brother hid behind a corner with his crumpled report card.
I seemed pretty holy, inside and out, and to keep myself under control I promised to stay away from my older brother. Still, when he threw his report card at my face, I chased him around the card, tripped, and scuffed a knee and raked my palms against asphalt. My brother laughed, spit, and ran away without his books.
That was the beginning of summer. The heat was already yellow and fierce. I tried to be good. I played with my little brother who was bored of Tinkertoys and mud. I did the dishes without my mother's asking. I ran a finger across our furniture, collecting dust that I wiped on my jeans. I read three pages a day, prayed for the sick and the lost, and on Sundays lit puddly candles at my own expense. I promised myself to keep my drawer tidy, the balled socks in one corner, and the folded T-shirts in another.
But my older brother kept me from being good. One day at Romain playground, while I was busy with a craft project that would transform a toilet roll into a pencil holder, he came from behind and yanked off my special smoke-tinted glasses. Earlier in the week, a doctor had prescribed those glasses to wear because I had infected my eyes when I stared half a day into a box fan. It was a contest among the idiot boys of the block to see who could stare the longest. I won by more than an hour.
My brother stole my glasses and ran off, which sent me home walking like a blind man in the harsh Fresno sun. When Mother found out, she whipped my brother from one corner of the backyard to the other while I watched from the bedroom window. I adjusted my smoke-tinted glasses and sipped from my tupperware glass of Kool-Aid. That night in our bunk beds, my brother promised to get me back. I laughed at my brother, but in the dark of poor vision I was scared. The next day I returned to the playground to finish my toilet-roll pencil holder and start on a planter. From the garbage I had pulled a Campbell's soup can, splashed it with peat moss, and painted it red. I glued on bottle caps I had dug out with a spoon from a gas station Coke machine: one row of Coca-Cola caps, then a row of Orange Crush, and finally one of Dr. Pepper. When I finished with this detail, I packed dirt into the can, poked in two pinto beans, and watered them carefully so the bottle caps wouldn't get wet and fall off.
I was pleased with my planter. When Mother came home that afternoon from candling eggs for Safeway, I took her by the hand to the backyard to show her. “Very pretty,” she said, her face unmoved. I showed my baby brother whom I had to boost into my arms. My sister seemed mildly interested. My older brother popped his fist into a baseball mitt and spit.
I intended to enter my planter into the crafts contest at the playground. I also intended to enter my pencil holder, my lanyard dog chain, my plaster-of-Paris footprint of Baby Brother, and my pickle-jar vase decorated with spray-painted macaroni. But my real hope was on the planter. For a week I watered it faithfully as I waited for the beans to unfurl from the earth. Each day I sat in the sunlight, reading books and occasionally smiling at my plant. I reglued the bottle caps that fell off, whisked away ants that came to tunnel holes in the dirt, and watered the beans which in my mind would soon push skywards and beyond.
Five days went by and I began to worry. I poured more and more water into the can, but nothing seemed to happen. I spoke to it softly, and muttered prayers. I moved it into the shade, thinking perhaps that it was thirsty for shadow. Finally, on the day of judging, I gathered my projects, including my planted can of dirt, and carried them to the playground. When I returned home I prayed and remembered my promises of dishes, dust, and tidy drawers. I did my chores, and mowed the lawn with a rusty mower.
The next day when I returned to Romain playground, I was a winner! My lanyard and plaster-of-Paris footprint took second place. My toilet-roll pencil holder won third, and my planter, minus its green growth, received fourth. In celebration, the coach poured us paper cups of Coca-Cola and handed out fistfuls of popcorn and candy.
When the party was over, my sister and I balanced our crafts in our arms and returned home. Debra had won two first place certificates and bragged all the way home and into autumn. Still, I was happy and taped my certificates on my bedroom wall. That evening after dinner I took my planter to the front yard where I sat on the lawn sucking a blade of grass and wondering why the plants had not come up. My brother Rick rode by on his bike and yelled, “I told you I'd get you.” I looked up at him as he rode off, and then looked at the can. I scratched the surface of the dirt lightly and then dug with the full force of my fingernails. Nothing. The beans were gone.
I looked up from the can and, with moist lips, muttered a promise, “My brother has to die.”
______
The Locket
I NEVER LIKED jewelry. My sister Debra did. Twenty Bazooka comic strips and a dollar—after a three-week binge of reading teenage romances while waiting for the mailman—brought her a gold-painted locket, studded with plastic pearls and a fake diamond. I wanted her to choose the miniature binoculars because I helped her chew at least seven pieces of pink bubble gum and gave her a clean dime in exchange for our once-a-week pudding dessert. We were always selling desserts to each other. We were always short a dime or a quarter, and our only bargaining chip was dessert, especially the pudding mother served in gold-rimmed goblets, the kind kings and queens used in Robin Hood movies.
I wanted Debra to choose the binoculars. My head was large, but my eyes were small as a cat's, maybe even smaller. I could look through both lenses with one eye, and what I wanted was a better look at our neighbor, a junior college student who swam in an aluminum-sided doughboy pool. She used a ladder to get in, and often just stood on the ladder fiddling with her top and snapping her bikini bottom back into place. I could spy on her from behind our fence, the binoculars to my right eye because that one seemed to work better.
But Debra chose the locket. When it arrived in a business-sized envelope, I waved it at her and said, “It's here.” Angrily, she snatched it from me and took it to her room. I ate an afternoon bowl of Cocoa Puffs and watched a movie about giant ants no flame thrower could stop. I looked at her bedroom door now and then, wondering what was going on. Later, just before the ants got fried with a laser, she came out stinking of perfume, the locket around her brown neck. She didn't look at me as she went out the front door and crossed the street to see her friend, Jill.
My sister was eleven. She still clacked the plastic faces of Barbie and Ken together, made them hug, made them cry and run back to each other, stiff arms extended, faces wet with pretend tears from the bathroom sink. But she and Jill played with them less and less. Now they were going for the real thing: boys with washed faces.
In spite of the plastic pearls and the chip of glass centered in the middle, the locket made her look grown-up. I didn't tease her, and she didn't tease me about wearing rummage-sale baseball cleats.
All summer Debra wore the locket, and Jill wore one, too, an expensive one her mother had bought at Penney's. But Debra didn't care. She loved the locket whose metal chain left her neck green. Mother admired the locket, said it made her look elegant. That summer, Debra began to complain less and less about doing the dishes.
When a pearl fell out, she glued it back in. Another lost its grip and rolled into the floor furnace. She vacuumed the furnace of its ghostly lint, and shook out the bag and ran her fingers through the stinking hair, lint, broken potato chips, Cocoa Puffs, Cheerios, staples, bits of Kleenex, dead ants, and blue, flowery marble. She searched through the debris until, miraculously, she found the tiny pearl. She glued it back into place and gave her locket a rest.
One day, while Debra was at the playground swimming, I snuck into her bedroom to peek in the locket because I knew she kept something in the frame. She was always snapping it open and closed, always feeling pretty happy when she looke
d down at her breasts, twin mounds that had begun to cast small shadows. When I opened it, slowly because the clasp looked fragile, I saw a face that was mostly an eyeball looking at me. I stared back at the eyeball, and after a moment realized that it was Paul of The Beatles. It was Paul's eyeball, a bit droopy, a bit sad like his songs. Paul was favored by the girls who rode their bikes up and down the block singing “Michelle, ma belle.”
A few days later I checked the locket again. Paul's eyeball was gone, and now I was staring at a smiling Herman and the Hermits. Herman looked happy. His hair was long and soft, and his teeth were large and charmingly crooked. I smiled wide and thought for a moment that I looked like Herman. A few days later it was back to Paul in a new picture that she had cut out of a magazine. I thumbed through the magazine, emptied of all the famous pop stars, and looked around the room. Almost everything was pink. The furry rug, the canopy bed, the bottles of perfume and nail polish, the much-hugged pillow, everything except the chest of drawers which she intended to paint by fall. I left in a hurry when I heard Debra's bike skid to a halt in the driveway.
All summer it was Paul's eyeball, Herman's teeth, and one time Paul Revere with his colonial hat. Debra began to polish her nails and walk more slowly, erect as a ladder. By fall, the chest of drawers was pink and Mother was no longer worried about the green around her neck where the chain rested—an allergic reaction to cheap metal. Debra no longer wore the locket. She was saving Bazooka comics for a camera that came with a free roll of film. She had her first boyfriend and wanted to take his picture on the sly, wanted more than a droopy eyeball or toothy smile. She wanted the entire face, and some of the neck.
