Living Up the Street

by Gary Soto

  I worked in deep concentration as did the other kids, and when I finished I carried it very carefully to the game room where the coach sat on a stool behind a Dutch door thumbing through magazines. I looked up at her, smiling my happiness. She squinted and furrowed her brow when she saw my creation. “Ummm, interesting, Gary.” She took it and placed it on a shelf.

  The next day I made an ashtray. I rolled clay into a ball, pressed it out into a circle, and then raised the edges with a spoon. I made four dents where the cigarettes would rest, sticking colored buttons on each side of the dents.

  That afternoon I also attempted a lanyard, but my patience with “loop and tuck, loop and tuck” gave out and I threw it into the garbage can. “Damn thing,” I said under my breath as I walked to the game room to check out a four-square ball. I bounced it inordinately high in hopes of attracting the kids who were still working at their crafts under the tree. Few looked up and none left to join me; their dirty legs dangled motionless under the table.

  At dinner that evening my sister and I described to our mother the excitement of the contest, each sure the other was out of the running.

  “You should see my Frostie bottle,” I said to her as I ripped a tortilla and chewed loudly. “It’s beautiful—like gold.”

  Debra described the toilet roll she had painted red and black with macaroni glued in a spiral like a barber’s pole.

  “Mine’s the best, Mom!” Debra tore off a piece of tortilla and chewed louder than me, with her mouth open.

  “Mom, I can see Debbie’s food,” I pointed with a fork. Debra chewed even louder, mocking me with her eyes spread wide like a bug’s.

  “OK, you kids, behave yourselves.” Mom cleared the table as we scooted outside to play.

  The next day I made a drawing of a dragster on fire. I outlined the lean body carefully, deliberating on each feature from the spoked wheels to the roll bar, and then scribbled the flames a vicious red and black, all the while whining like a car turning a corner. Finished, I carried it stiffly, as if I were in a pageant, to the game room. I handed it proudly to the coach who asked what it was.

  “A dragster. That’s the engine.” I pointed out the eighteen pipes that hung on the side. I showed her the driver who had been thrown from the car. He was dead.

  That afternoon the coach announced a special contest in which we could do anything we pleased.

  “But it must be a secret,” she said. All of the kids huddled in the shade because of the afternoon heat that rose above a hundred degrees. We listened quietly as she explained that we had to do it at home with our own materials and that we should be original. And again we asked what “original” meant, and again she explained, “You know, different.… You know, unique,” with her hands flashing out for definition.

  Starry-eyed, my mind blazing with a seven-year-old’s idea of beauty, I ran home because I knew exactly what I intended to produce. From the garbage I pulled a Campbell’s soup can, ripped off the paper label, and in the garage painted it red with a stiff brush, the stifling heat wringing sweat from my face. I let the soup can dry in the sun, and that evening I glued rows of bottle caps that I had dug out with a spoon from a Coke machine: One row of Coca-Cola caps, then a row of Orange Crush, then one of Dr. Pepper, and so on. When I finished with this detail I packed dirt into the can, poked two pinto beans into it, and watered them carefully so the bottle caps wouldn’t get wet and fall off.

  I was pleased with my craft. When my mother came home that afternoon I took her by the hand to the back yard to show her.

  “Very pretty.” Her face was plain and unmoved, tired from a day’s work of candling eggs, but still I grinned like a cat, already imagining that on Monday when the judging took place I was sure to win.

  It was Friday when I finished the “special” craft, and I assumed that the next day the sprout of a pinto bean would break through the moist dirt. Nothing was there in the center of the can, so I watered it again with great care, every few hours checking to see if the beans had sprouted. Nothing.

  Sunday arrived with still no sprout of greenery. Only two ants salvaging a feathery seed. I blew them from their task and again watered the beans, after which I placed the can on the fence rail in full sun and skipped off to play for the day, believing that when I returned home I would find the pale head of a bean plant pushing up from the dirt. I took the can off the fence. Nothing.

  I brought the can into the garage where I pasted back the bottle caps that had fallen off from the sun’s heat. I tapped the dirt, and it was hard. I again watered the seeds, praying they would grow.

  “Come on, plants, get up. Tomorrow it’s Monday.”

  Monday morning the plants had not come through, and although I was disappointed I still wanted to enter the can in the contest. With Debra, who had made a pencil holder from a toilet roll encircled with popsicle sticks, I went to the playground where I handed over my craft piece to the woman coach. That afternoon there was no crafts period; instead the man coach, along with a lady we didn’t know, came to judge.

  “How can you kids stand the heat?” the lady asked as she stepped into the game room fanning herself with a paper plate. She wore a white dress with a shiny red belt and a red hat, and looked very clean with her made-up face.

  All the kids gathered around the Dutch door to try to hear what they were mumbling as they hovered over the crafts.

  Caveman, an Okie kid whose closely cropped hair sloped at a forty-five degree angle, climbed the Dutch door, and before the woman coach could stop him he went up to the lady and tugged at her dress. Looking up to her with a face covered with snots, he asked her for a nickel. “I’m hungry.”

  Embarrassed, the woman coach apologized and scolded Caveman as she carried him from the game room. She told the rest of us to go and sit under the tree. Caveman ran off as a brother of Rosie’s trailed him with his fists closed.

  Finally, about half an hour later, the coaches, along with the well-dressed lady, came out and announced the names of the winners. Among them were Ronnie, Rosie, Weasel, Raymond, and even Caveman. They repeated the names because two prizes had been left out. That time around I had won third prize for my Frostie bottle! I screamed loudly, and screamed again when I saw the man coach lugging a bucket of iced Cokes that gleamed like fish. The woman coach arrived with popcorn and cookies, and we all screamed and laughed and argued throughout the afternoon.

  When the party was over, my sister and I left with the crafts that hadn’t won first place. Debra had won two second place certificates, and bragged all the way home and into autumn. Still, I was happy and taped my third place certificate to the bedroom wall. That evening after dinner I took my can to the front yard where I sat on the lawn sucking a blade of grass and wondered 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 with realization. I scratched the surface of the dirt lightly and then dug with the full force of my fingernails. Nothing.

  I looked up from the can and, with moist eyes, muttered, “My brother has to die.”

  Looking for Work

  One July, while killing ants on the kitchen sink with a rolled newspaper, I had a nine-year-old’s vision of wealth that would save us from ourselves. For weeks I had drunk Kool-Aid and watched morning reruns of Father Knows Best, whose family was so uncomplicated in its routine that I very much wanted to imitate it. The first step was to get my brother and sister to wear shoes at dinner.

  “Come on, Rick—come on, Deb,” I whined. But Rick mimicked me and the same day that I asked him to wear shoes he came to the dinner table in only his swim trunks. My mother didn’t notice, nor did my sister, as we sat to eat our beans and tortillas in the stifling heat of our kitchen. We all gleamed like cellophane, wiping the sweat from our brows with the backs of our hands as we talked about the day: Frankie our neighbor was beat up by Faustino; the swimming pool at the playground would be closed for a day because the
pump was broken.

  Such was our life. So that morning, while doing in the train of ants which arrived each day, I decided to become wealthy, and right away! After downing a bowl of cereal, I took a rake from the garage and started up the block to look for work.

  We lived on an ordinary block of mostly working class people: warehousemen, egg candlers, welders, mechanics, and a union plumber. And there were many retired people who kept their lawns green and the gutters uncluttered of the chewing gum wrappers we dropped as we rode by on our bikes. They bent down to gather our litter, muttering at our evilness.

  At the corner house I rapped the screen door and a very large woman in a muu-muu answered. She sized me up and then asked what I could do.

  “Rake leaves,” I answered, smiling.

  “It’s summer, and there ain’t no leaves,” she countered. Her face was pinched with lines; fat jiggled under her chin. She pointed to the lawn, then the flower bed, and said: “You see any leaves there—or there?” I followed her pointing arm, stupidly. But she had a job for me and that was to get her a Coke at the liquor store. She gave me twenty cents, and after ditching my rake in a bush, off I ran. I returned with an unbagged Pepsi, for which she thanked me and gave me a nickel from her apron.

  I skipped off her porch, fetched my rake, and crossed the street to the next block where Mrs. Moore, mother of Earl the retarded man, let me weed a flower bed. She handed me a trowel and for a good part of the morning my fingers dipped into the moist dirt, ripping up runners of Bermuda grass. Worms surfaced in my search for deep roots, and I cut them in halves, tossing them to Mrs. Moore’s cat who pawed them playfully as they dried in the sun. I made out Earl whose face was pressed to the back window of the house, and although he was calling to me I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. Embarrassed, I worked without looking up, but I imagined his contorted mouth and the ring of keys attached to his belt—keys that jingled with each palsied step. He scared me and I worked quickly to finish the flower bed. When I did finish Mrs. Moore gave me a quarter and two peaches from her tree, which I washed there but ate in the alley behind my house.

  I was sucking on the second one, a bit of juice staining the front of my T-shirt, when Little John, my best friend, came walking down the alley with a baseball bat over his shoulder, knocking over trash cans as he made his way toward me.

  Little John and I went to St. John’s Catholic School, where we sat among the “stupids.” Miss Marino, our teacher, alternated the rows of good students with the bad, hoping that by sitting side-by-side with the bright students the stupids might become more intelligent, as though intelligence were contagious. But we didn’t progress as she had hoped. She grew frustrated when one day, while dismissing class for recess, Little John couldn’t get up because his arms were stuck in the slats of the chair’s backrest. She scolded us with a shaking finger when we knocked over the globe, denting the already troubled Africa. She muttered curses when Leroy White, a real stupid but a great Softball player with the gift to hit to all fields, openly chewed his host when he made his First Communion; his hands swung at his sides as he returned to the pew looking around with a big smile.

  Little John asked what I was doing, and I told him that I was taking a break from work, as I sat comfortably among high weeds. He wanted to join me, but I reminded him that the last time he’d gone door-to-door asking for work his mother had whipped him. I was with him when his mother, a New Jersey Italian who could rise up in anger one moment and love the next, told me in a polite but matter-of-fact voice that I had to leave because she was going to beat her son. She gave me a homemade popsicle, ushered me to the door, and said that I could see Little John the next day. But it was sooner than that. I went around to his bedroom window to suck my popsicle and watch Little John dodge his mother’s blows, a few hitting their mark but many whirring air.

  It was midday when Little John and I converged in the alley, the sun blazing in the high nineties, and he suggested that we go to Roosevelt High School to swim. He needed five cents to make fifteen, the cost of admission, and I lent him a nickel. We ran home for my bike and when my sister found out that we were going swimming, she started to cry because she didn’t have the fifteen cents but only an empty Coke bottle. I waved for her to come and three of us mounted the bike—Debra on the cross bar, Little John on the handle bars and holding the Coke bottle which we would cash for a nickel and make up the difference that would allow all of us to get in, and me pumping up the crooked streets, dodging cars and pot holes. We spent the day swimming under the afternoon sun, so that when we got home our mom asked us what was darker, the floor or us? She feigned a stern posture, her hands on her hips and her mouth puckered. We played along. Looking down, Debbie and I said in unison, “Us.”

  That evening at dinner we all sat down in our bathing suits to eat our beans, laughing and chewing loudly. Our mom was in a good mood, so I took a risk and asked her if sometime we could have turtle soup. A few days before I had watched a television program in which a Polynesian tribe killed a large turtle, gutted it, and then stewed it over an open fire. The turtle, basted in a sugary sauce, looked delicious as I ate an afternoon bowl of cereal, but my sister, who was watching the program with a glass of Kool-Aid between her knees, said, “Caca.”

  My mother looked at me in bewilderment. “Boy, are you a crazy Mexican. Where did you get the idea that people eat turtles?”

  “On television,” I said, explaining the program. Then I took it a step further. “Mom, do you think we could get dressed up for dinner one of these days? David King does.”

  “Ay, Dios,” my mother laughed. She started collecting the dinner plates, but my brother wouldn’t let go of his. He was still drawing a picture in the bean sauce. Giggling, he said it was me, but I didn’t want to listen because I wanted an answer from Mom. This was the summer when I spent the mornings in front of the television that showed the comfortable lives of white kids. There were no beatings, no rifts in the family. They wore bright clothes; toys tumbled from their closets. They hopped into bed with kisses and woke to glasses of fresh orange juice, and to a father sitting before his morning coffee while the mother buttered his toast. They hurried through the day making friends and gobs of money, returning home to a warmly lit living room, and then dinner. Leave It to Beaver was the program I replayed in my mind:

  “May I have the mashed potatoes?” asks Beaver with a smile.

  “Sure, Beav,” replies Wally as he taps the corners of his mouth with a starched napkin.

  The father looks on in his suit. The mother, decked out in earrings and a pearl necklace, cuts into her steak and blushes. Their conversation is politely clipped.

  “Swell,” says Beaver, his cheeks puffed with food.

  Our own talk at dinner was loud with belly laughs and marked by our pointing forks at one another. The subjects were commonplace.

  “Gary, let’s go to the ditch tomorrow,” my brother suggests. He explains that he has made a life preserver out of four empty detergent bottles strung together with twine and that he will make me one if I can find more bottles. “No way are we going to drown.”

  “Yeah, then we could have a dirt clod fight,” I reply, so happy to be alive.

  Whereas the Beaver’s family enjoyed dessert in dishes at the table, our mom sent us outside, and more often than not I went into the alley to peek over the neighbor’s fences and spy out fruit, apricot or peaches.

  I had asked my mom and again she laughed that I was a crazy chavalo as she stood in front of the sink, her arms rising and falling with suds, face glistening from the heat. She sent me outside where my brother and sister were sitting in the shade that the fence threw out like a blanket. They were talking about me when I plopped down next to them. They looked at one another and then Debbie, my eight-year-old sister, started in.

  “What’s this crap about getting dressed up?”

  She had entered her profanity stage. A year later she would give up such words and slip into her Catholic
uniform, and into squealing on my brother and me when we “cussed this” and “cussed that.”

  I tried to convince them that if we improved the way we looked we might get along better in life. White people would like us more. They might invite us to places, like their homes or front yards. They might not hate us so much.

  My sister called me a “craphead,” and got up to leave with a stalk of grass dangling from her mouth. “They’ll never like us.”

  My brother’s mood lightened as he talked about the ditch—the white water, the broken pieces of glass, and the rusted car fenders that awaited our knees. There would be toads, and rocks to smash them.

  David King, the only person we knew who resembled the middle class, called from over the fence. David was Catholic, of Armenian and French descent, and his closet was filled with toys. A bear-shaped cookie jar, like the ones on television, sat on the kitchen counter. His mother was remarkably kind while she put up with the racket we made on the street. Evenings, she often watered the front yard and it must have upset her to see us—my brother and I and others—jump from trees laughing, the unkillable kids of the very poor, who got up unshaken, brushed off, and climbed into another one to try again.

  David called again. Rick got up and slapped grass from his pants. When I asked if I could come along he said no. David said no. They were two years older so their affairs were different from mine. They greeted one another with foul names and took off down the alley to look for trouble.

  I went inside the house, turned on the television, and was about to sit down with a glass of Kool-Aid when Mom shooed me outside.

  “It’s still light,” she said. “Later you’ll bug me to let you stay out longer. So go on.”